Risk Modelling of Safety Critical Systems for Life Extension

For many safety critical, infrastructure intensive, industries (offshore oil and gas, nuclear, railway) it is frequently more cost effective to operate their systems beyond the original design life than to enter a new build programme. Ageing systems experience an increase in their rate of degradation and since the system design is fixed, the condition of the safety systems is then controlled through the effective use of maintenance. To enable the continued safe operation of such systems, models are used to predict the risk of ageing safety system failure accounting for the selected maintenance strategy.

Funding for several projects has been secured to investigate the modelling issues of risks resulting from the hazards experienced in the nuclear (loss of coolant accident), offshore oil and gas (gas and oil fires and explosions), railway (derailment and collisions) and underground railway (ventilation failure, flooding and fires) industries. The aim of the projects will be to develop models for these industries to predict the risks and help identify how these can be mitigated as the age of the system increases. The modelling methodology used will be an integrated Petri net/ Bayesian Network approach.

The successful candidate will have (or will be about to receive) at least an upper second class degree in mathematics, engineering, physics or computer science with a strong skills in modelling and the development of software.