RISK ASSESSMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING SYSTEMS – THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

Abstract

In analyses of industrial safety systems, Risk Assessment procedures are foremost being performed in order to improve protection measures aimed to safeguard personnel and the equipment. However, environmental consequences of certain major industrial accidents clearly imply that Environmental Safety Assessment must not be neglected as an important component of overall Risk Assessment process. It has been proven that significant number of industrial accidents have been either caused or aggravated by actions (or lack of appropriate actions) of various operators in charge. Therefore, Human Error Assessment must be taken in consideration as an important part of Environmental Safety in industrial and infrastructural systems likewise.

Some preliminary researches of the latest events indicate that certain serious consequences of natural disasters could be mitigated if the data obtained from environmental monitoring were coupled with alerts from industrial systems and than properly handled by decision makers at various hierarchical levels. While some failures could be attributed to design errors in early stages of development, some others fall entirely in domain of improper communication or lack of adequate and timely response.

Standard techniques, methods and tools for Health and Safety Risk Assessment, Environmental Risk Assessment and Human Reliability Assessment have been developed for years now. However, there will be always a room for improvements in terms of integration, quality and comprehensiveness.

This paper strives to describe possibilities of combining and/or integrating some standard procedures in order to improve Risk Assessment outcomes and safety performance of observed systems. Human Error Analysis has been emphasized as an important part of Risk Assessment procedure and a framework for performing assessment has been outlined in the paper.