Some of the significant process industries incidents occurred by overflowing vessels, including BP Texas City and Buncefield. In many overflow incidents, alarms were designed to signal the need for operator intervention. These alarms may have been identified as...
Alarms and operator response to them are one of the first layers of protection in preventing a plant upset from escalating into a hazardous event. This paper discusses how to evaluate and maximize the risk reduction (or minimize the probability of failure on demand)...
Recent industrial accidents at Texas City, Buncefield (UK) and Institute, WV have highlighted the connection between poor alarm management and process safety incidents. At Texas City key level alarms failed to notify the operator of the unsafe and abnormal conditions...
Alarms and operator response are one of the first layers of defense in preventing a plant upset from escalating into an abnormal situation. The new ISA 18.2 standard on alarm management recommends following a lifecycle approach similar to the existing ISA84/IEC 61511...
Poor alarm management is one of the leading causes of unplanned downtime, contributing to over $20B in lost production every year, and of major industrial incidents such as the one in Texas City. Developing good alarm management practices is not a discrete activity,...
