ROLE OF HUMAN FACTOR IN PIPELINE SAFETY

摘要

The paper describes a new method of quantitative assessment of the influence of the human factor (HF) on safety and risk analysis of pipelines throughout their life cycle, based on applied theory of orgraphs (oriented graphs). The paper describes the main components, means and methods of a holistic and quantitative human reliability analysis (QHRA) using quantitative values of human error. Three types of decision making persons (DMP's) are considered: members of maintenance/repair crews, ILI diagnosticians and different rank DMP's that operate or own the pipeline. The applied orgraph theory is used to choose, out of a set of possible measures (the effect and cost of implementation of each of them is a known value), a subset of measures that: 1) delivers maximal decrease of the probability of pipeline disaster-type failure or 2) for a given amount of total available financial means, selects a subset of measures that maximizes the decrease of the disaster-type failure. Three real life cases are described: Choosing measures that enhance pipeline ILI results; Minimizing the third party intervention probability; Choosing security measures for an oil pipeline.