1 Scope
This Technical Report aims to close the gap between the state-of-the-art and the application
of probabilistic calculations for the safety systems of the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries. It provides guidelines
for reliability and safety system analysts and the oil and gas industries to:
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• understand the correct meaning of the definitions used in the reliability field;
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• identify
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— the safety systems which may be concerned,
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— the difficulties encountered when dealing with reliability modelling and calculation of safety systems,
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— the relevant probabilistic parameters to be considered;
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• be informed of effective solutions overcoming the encountered difficulties and allowing
to undertake the calculations of relevant probabilistic parameters;
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• obtain sufficient knowledge of the principles and framework (e.g. the modelling power
and limitations) of the well-established approaches currently used in the reliability field:
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— analytical formulae;[1][2][13]
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— Boolean:
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— sequential: event trees,[8] cause consequence diagrams[10] and LOPA;[9]
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— Markovian;[6]
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— Petri nets;[7]
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• obtain sufficient knowledge of the principles of probabilistic evaluations:
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• select an approach suitable with the complexity of the related safety system and the reliability study which is undertaken;
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• handle safety and dependability (e.g. for production assurance purpose, see 3.1.1) within the same reliability framework.
The elementary approaches (e.g. PHA, HAZID, HAZOP, FMECA) are out of the scope of
this Technical Report. Yet they are of utmost importance and ought to be applied first
as their results provide the input information essential to properly undertake the
implementation of the approaches described in this Technical Report: analytical formulae,
Boolean approaches (reliability block diagrams, fault trees, event trees, etc.), Markov graphs and Petri nets.
This Technical Report is focused on probabilistic calculations of random failures and, therefore, the non-random (i.e. systematic failures as per the international reliability vocabulary IEV 191[14]) failures are out of the scope even if, to some extent, they are partly included into the reliability data collected from the field.