Integrating HAZOP, Reliability Analysis, and Risk-Based Decision-Making into Critical Energy Infrastructure Design
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: This paper develops a common scenario model that translates HAZOP findings into reliability structures, risk priorities, and verified design actions. The study responds to the problem that design teams often identify process deviations, equipment failures, and business interruption through separate studies with inconsistent boundaries and assumptions. It uses an integrative conceptual review of scholarly and professional literature published to date, drawing on peer-reviewed journal articles, guideline documents, and international standards synthesized within this manuscript. The framework organizes eight decision functions: design-basis confirmation, HAZOP deviation review, failure-mode analysis, fault and event tree modelling, barrier assessment, risk evaluation, design action prioritization, closeout assurance. It applies those functions across feed and transfer systems, separation and treating units, compression systems, storage systems, pipeline interfaces, utilities and control systems. The analysis treats uncertainty, process safety, reliability, environmental performance, resource efficiency, economics, and organizational control as connected requirements. The proposed architecture links a system definition, evidence register, model assumptions, intervention portfolio, verification plan, and learning cycle. Its central proposition is that connect deviation analysis, failure logic, barrier performance, consequence evaluation, and design decisions through one traceable workflow when decisions preserve traceability from measured conditions to selected actions and verified outcomes. The paper offers testable propositions, an implementation roadmap, asset-specific application protocols, and a research agenda. The framework supports case-study testing and quantitative extension without claiming universal performance before field validation.
Institutions: GE Vernova (United States), Nnamdi Azikiwe University
Language: English
Topic: Risk and Safety Analysis
Subfield: Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7214549674