Abstract:
The oil and gas industry relies upon safety barriers to mitigate risk and allow
for continual safety in operations. Inadequate safety barriers can lead to severe
consequences in the event of a negative incident. Current models for evaluating
barrier effectiveness were examined in this work, exploring the hypothesis that
there were gaps in available models. This hypothesis assumed that a more
effective barrier evaluation approach would be beneficial to consider as opposed
to any existing method that would be used in isolation.
The importance of this work is defined by the great risk of loss to people and
assets that is associated with failed barrier performance. Losses can occur when
barriers either fail to perform as expected, or when they are ineffectively chosen
as the most appropriate barrier for an application. Therefore, to evaluate when
a barrier is most effective is a key step in reducing chance for loss.
The fundamental step for identifying the potential performance of a barrier
requires a critical action. The action is to identify factors by which to evaluate
barrier performance. Such factors were lacking in clarity, and one objective of
this work was to rectify this by identifying factors which should be used in
evaluating barrier effectiveness.
