Chemical Engineering October 2014 - 57

Feature Report
tionable intelligence. Technologies
do exist to complete the heavy-lifting
integration tasks. Thus, analytics
applications can then connect the
dots, comparing asset operation and
maintenance performance against a
safety basis, and alerting personnel
to any deviations.
Further, the proactive interface
Figure 3. Cumulative risk is shown for an entire operating unit, drawing attention
to all areas that are prone to incident-causing situations
to-day basis. A daily review of cumulative
risk enables organizations to
digest new operations information.
Where are breaks in the plan that
will defer planned work? What defective
equipment has been found
that cannot be repaired immediately?
Which employee is unexpectedly
off the job today? The accumulated
information can be used to fuel
risk assessments, both operational
and safety-critical, leading to decisions
on whether to shut down or to
take compensating measures.
While this provides a reliable
basis for operational decision-making
and control, and ensures that
levels of cumulative risk remain
tolerable, the key step is to leverage
the convergence of OT and IT and
react ahead of incidents through
realtime risk monitoring, analysis
and advising. Figure 3 shows a visualized
representation of cumulative
risk for an operating unit.
Proactive analysis
Traditional approaches to process
safety management have leaned
heavily on post-mortem analysis,
investigating what went wrong
and lessons to be learned. Although
analysis after the fact is useful,
organizations must start asking
" How can we be more proactive in
addressing operational risk? " in
order to truly slow the pace of incident
occurrence and decrease incidents'
severity. The answer lies in
the integration of operational and
information technologies.
The clearest way to be more proactive
is to integrate a production
facility's wealth of realtime operational
data, such as instrumentation
and control data, with technology
for dynamic risk analysis. When
done comprehensively, this can result
in a realtime dynamic risk advisory
capacity for monitoring and
immediately alerting personnel to
risks as they change and develop,
and for providing an optimal course
of action to maintain the integrity
of the facility.
Accessing and amalgamating all
of the required data is challenging,
because data can reside everywhere:
from operations, maintenance and
automation systems, log books, operator
rounds, mechanical inspections,
lock-out or tag-out applications and
databases. Additionally, information
is being created and changed constantly.
Data needs to be accessed
from disparate systems, validated,
transformed, integrated and contextualized
in order for it to drive ac1
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can
be strengthened even more
through the use of visualization
technologies in addition to analytics.
Analytic technology can calculate
the change in risk dynamically,
(for instance, weighing the consequences
of an uncompleted operator
round or a non-implemented proof
test on a critical device) and update
a facility's risk matrix in realtime
with the revised impact. Visualization
technology can then help focus
employees' attention on the change
in risk using geospatial representation
and color-coded graphics
(Figure 4) for impacted facilities,
units and equipment.
Putting intelligence into action
The next step is to automatically direct
appropriate corrective actions
based on this realtime intelligence.
In an example scenario, an operator
scans a screen that maps an entire
facility and displays the dynamic
risk levels associated with each of
the facility's unit operations at that
moment. A specific unit displays an
elevated level risk and the operator
investigates to discover a deviation
from the design specification that is
now raising the likelihood of an inciLikeLihood
oF hazardous event
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Figure 4. The capability to visually classify all the various risks for a facility allows
for quick responses by personnel
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Chemical Engineering October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering October 2014
