Probability analysis of offshore fire by incorporating human and organizational factor

Abstract

In this paper, a probability analysis model of offshore fire is presented using the method of converting fault tree (FT) into Bayesian Network (BN) to incorporate the effect of Human and Organizational Factor (HOF). The multi-phase model allows different methods to be applied to different parts. In the first phase, Fault Tree (FT) is used to model the factors how to contribute to the fire scenarios, which guide the construction of BN model. In the second phase, BN is used to extend the causal chain of basic events to potential HOFs and provide a more precise quantitative links between the event nodes. The distinct advantages of BN making them more suitable than FTs are their ability in explicitly representing the dependencies of events, updating probabilities, and coping with uncertainties, which cannot be considered by FT. Finally, the integration algorithm is demonstrated on four offshore fire scenarios. It clearly shows that the model integrates the power of FT for modeling deterministic causal paths with the flexibility of BN for modeling non-deterministic HOF relationships. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.