Dynamic risk management to enable inherently safer process system digitalization
Dr. Faisal Khan
Director, Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center
Abstract
While efforts to use digital solutions in process operations are gaining wider acceptance, there are serious safety concerns that need to be addressed when adopting digitalization. Safety issues have also evolved with digitalization, from simple equipment failure to failure of process systems (equipment with electronic systems), monitoring and control systems, data encryption systems, and most recently, software systems. How these evolving process safety issues are understood and addressed will govern the overall safety of process facilities. Therefore, proactively converting this challenge to opportunity and developing digital process safety solutions more holistically. Dynamic risk management is one approach to address this challenge. The concept of creating a dynamic risk profile for a processing system encompasses the likelihood and consequences of a given abnormal event. Dynamic risk estimation uses Bayesian theory to update the probability of an event occurrence and a generalized consequence algorithm to obtain the given event's relative consequences. This approach results in a risk function with predictive capabilities and the ability to be updated with time. This talk also touches on system advances from a digitalization perspective and the dynamic risk management approach's details.
About the Speaker
Dr. Faisal Khan is the incoming Professor and Director of Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC). He is currently Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier I) of Offshore Safety and Risk Engineering. He is the founder of the Centre for Risk Integrity and Safety and Engineering (C-RISE), which has over research 90 research members. His research interest areas include safety and risk engineering, inherent safety, and risk-based integrity assessment and management. He is the recipient of the President Outstanding Research Award of 2012-13, CSChE National Award on Process Safety Management of 2014, President Outstanding Research Supervision Award of 2013-14, and Society of Petroleum Engineer award for his contribution to Health, Safety and Risk Engineering (2015). He has authored over 500 research articles in peer-reviewed journals on safety, risk, and reliability engineering and seven books on the subject area. He is Editor-in-Chief to the Journal of Process Safety and Environmental Protection and Safety in Harsh Environments, and subject Editor/Editorial Board Members to other safety and risk journals. He regularly offers training programs/workshops on safety and risk engineering in different places, including St John's, Chennai, Dubai, Beijing, Aberdeen, Cape Town, Doha and Kuala Lumpur.
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