Accounting for Safety Barriers Degradation in the Risk Assessment of Oil and Gas Systems by Multistate Bayesian Networks

In this paper, a multistate Bayesian Network (BN) is proposed to model and evaluate the functional performance of safety barriers in Oil Gas plants. The nodes BN represent Health States (HSs) corresponding conditional Failure Probability (FP) values are assigned. HSs assessed on basis specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related barrier characteristics (i.e., technical, procedural or organizational, continuously monitored event-based characterized). FP estimated from failure datasets (for technical barriers), evaluated by Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) operational organizational barriers) assigned expert elicitation lacking data information). For illustration, developed for preventive applied case study potential release flammable material slug catcher representative O&G Upstream plant which may lead major accident scenarios (fire, explosion, toxic dispersion). results demonstrate that able account HS their associated performance.