A framework for safety automation of safety-critical systems operations

The more the risk level the lesser the safety and vice versa. The history of risk evaluation is moving from the point of accident investigation toward prior determination of quantum risk level. The risk level assessment is a part of risk evaluation process for identifying the risk aspects, impacts, hazard significance, and operational hazards. Risk assessment process helps for appropriate design of risk control procedures, to suggest provision of safety adequacy measures to reduce risk consequences, avoid or mitigate risks, and hazards. Risk free and failure free or fail-safe Operations in Safety-Critical Systems may not lead to loss of equipment, financial loss, environmental damage and hazard to human life. Prevailing standard techniques point out various risk factors and map out potential points where a safety critical operation can fail. The development of a framework is based on prevailing applicable standards and deals with safety-risk assessment for safety automation of safety-critical system operations. To explore various underlying risk factors, impacts and evaluation for determining risk magnitude, attributes and probabilities exhaustively considering practical conditions, a framework for safety automation of safety-critical operations is proposed. The methodology identifies underlying risk factors and determines risk significance for occupational and financial. Based on the identifications, a ten point scale to assess safety-risks is derived. The results of framework application to power plant case showed substantial improvement in assessing risks when compared to existing risk assessments. This is an indication of prevailing limited/inadequate safety-risk assessment in deeply addressing associated operational risks, proving the framework useful.