Reliability Data Collection and Use in Risk and Availability Assessment

International cooperation on reliability and accident data collection and processing, exchange of experience on actual uses of data and reliability engineering techniques is a major step in realising safer and more efficient industrial systems. This book provides an updated presentation of the activities in this field on a worldwide basis.

General Session.- Error Analysis in Man-Machine Systems.- Environmental Impact Assessment and Risk Analysis - Theoretical Background of the Computerized Methodology LIVIA.- Addressing the Problem of the Relevance of Reliability Data to Varied Applications.- OREDA Session.- Planning and Management of the Offshore Reliability Data Project.- OREDA Phase II Data Collection Experience.- Failure Rate Estimation Based on Data from Different Environments and with Varying Quality.- Session 1: Reliability Data Banks.- Data Selection for Probabilistic Safety Assessment.- A Reliability Data Bank for the Natural Gas Distribution Industry.- Guidelines for Process Equipment Reliability Data by CCPS.- Session 2: Incidents Data Banks.- IFP Databanks on Offshore Accidents.- OCAAR: A Tool for Incident Analysis, Reporting and Processing.- Session 3: Common Cause Data.- Common-Cause Failures - Evidence from Sellafield.- Stochastic Reliability Analysis - Its Applications to Complex Redundancy Systems.- The Distributed Failure Probability Approach to Dependent Failure Analysis and its Application.- DEFEND - A Dependent Failures Database.- Session 4: Uncertainties - Source and Propagation.- An Analytic Method to Estimate Uncertainty in a Risk Function.- Modeling of Fuzzy Measurements in Reliability Estimation.- Evaluation of the Probability Distribution of Evacuation Time from a Light Railway Transport Station.- Session 5: Computer Aided Risk Analysis.- Computer Aided Reliability and Risk Assessment.- Hazard Identification: A Proposal for a New Development.- Deliverability of the Danish Natural Gas System *.- A Prototype Expert System to Perform Safety Evaluation of Alternative Architectures for Offshore Platforms.- Session 6: Reliability and Incidents Data Acquisition and Processing.- Report on the On-Going EuReDatA Benchmark Exercise on Data Analysis.- Expert Opinions as Data Source: Methods and Experiences.- The Analysis of Electronic Component Reliability Data.- An Intelligent End-User Interface for the Collection and Processing of Accident Data.- Physics Models for Reliability Data Processing.- A. Database for Reliability Data Processing *.- Session 7: Human Reliability.- Human Reliability Assessment and Probabilistic Risk Assessment.- Human Reliability Data Collection for Qualitative Modeling and Quantitative Assessment.- Quantification of Human Reliability.- Treatment of Uncertainties in Human Reliability Analysis.- Information and Communication Technology in the British Coal Industry - Systems Management and the Organisation and Reliability of Production and Maintenance Work.- Session 8: Probabilistic Safety and Availability Assessment.- ESFAS: An Information System on Worldwide Nuclear Power Stations.- Availability Assessment of a Technological Railway Information System.- Assessment of Failure Probabilities of Launch and Orbital Manoeuvres of Satellites.- Investigation of the Safety of a Ship Propulsion System by Monte Carlo Technique.- From the Plant Risk Analysis to the Area Risk Management: Problems and Perspectives.- Risk Analysis of a Large Pharmaceutical Factory - Methods Developed and Main Results *.- Risk Analysis of Dangerous Good Transport in Spain.- Criteria for the Brazilian Directive on High Risk Plants - Recent Developments.- Design Optimization of New Plants by Reliability Engineering Methodologies: Application to a Subsea Pumping Station.- Risk Analysis of Large Petrochemical and Refining Plants - A Method for Tracking Complexity Based on Accident Experience and Indexing Techniques *.- Risk Assessment of Operational Aspects in Offshore Drilling.- Availability Assessment of Complex Distributed Control System of a Petro Chemical Plant.- Reliability Assessment of a Charging Machine for Radioactive Waste Disposal.- The Availability of a Set of Inhomogeneous Machines.- Availability of the Pressure Relief Panel System at Pickering ‘A’ Nuclear Generating Station.- Comparative Availability and Reliability Assessment of Design Options for the Secondary Sodium Loops of the EFR.- Acetylene’s Plant Risk Analysis *.- Risk Analysis of Areas with High Concentration of Industrial Activities: Methodology used for Priolo and Naples Areas.- Risk Assessment for Transportation of Dangerous Materials - A Comparative Study.- Effect of Maintenance Factors on Risk and Adequacy of Power Generation.- Session 9: Feedback of Reliability into System Design, Operation and Management.- An Analysis of Accidents with Casualities in the Chemical Industry Based on Historical Facts.- Reliability Follow-Up in the Pre-Production Process at Volvo Car Corporation.- Issues Associated with the Development of Nuclear Power Plant “Program Effectiveness” Indicators for Regulatory Use.- The Role of a Disturbance Analysis and Surveillance System for the Operation and Management of Complex Plants.- Session 10: Data Fusion.- Data Fusion Problems in an Intelligent Data Bank Interface.- Measures of Dissimilarities for Contrasting Information Sources in Data Fusion.- A Methodology for a Fuzzy Expert System for Reliability and Safety Assessment *.- Session 11: Reliability Modeling and Techniques.- Computing Cumulative Measures in Reward Stochastic Processes by a Phase-Type Approximation.- The Use of Data to Identify Systems for Reliability Assessment Using Monte-Carlo Simulation Techniques.- Data Analysis and Modeling in the Evaluation of Multiple System Organ Failure.- Real-time Operational Reliability.- The Operational Failure Rate Modeling from a Reliability Data Bank *.- The Two-Sample Problem and its Practical Applications to Reliability Data Sets.- Implementing Stochastic Filtering for Reliability Applications - The Arc Code.- A Developed flow Graph Method.- Session 12: Structural and Mechanical Reliability.- KODABA - A Corrosion Data Information System.- The Evaluation of Mechanical Resistance of Storage Tanks Exposed to Fire by Using Data Bank Information.- Database of Mechanical Components in a Refinery - Structure and Operational Criteria for Inspection Planning and Reliability Evaluations.- Applicability of First Order Reliability Methods - A State of the Art.- Estimate of Reliability Characteristics and Maintenance of Building Machines by Applying Statistics of Extreme Values.- Session 13: Consequence Modeling.- VVF SIGEM: A Computerized System for the Emergencies Management.- Heavy Gas Dispersion.- How to Evaluate the Risk When the Media Impacted is Water? A Review of the Available Simulation Codes, Their Accuracy, Applicability, Credibility *.- Session 14: Software Reliability.- Software Data Collection and the Software Data Library.- Software Reliability Data Collection - Problems and Possibilities *.- Session 15: Electronic Reliability.- An Integrated Data Base and Reliability Assessment of Electrical Distribution Systems.- Field Failure Data Collection and Analysis of Repairable Systems.- Session 16: Reliability Tests.- Accelerated Test Procedure for Estimating Proportion of Early Failures of Metal Film Resistors.- Reliability Demonstration and Field Analysis of a Communications Controller.- Bayes Optimal Burn-In-Times.- Closing Session.- Review of the EuReDatA Project Groups’ Activities and Results.- * Contributions marked * were not available at the time of printing.