This is a book chapter that discusses a risk management approach based on Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). PRA is defined as a systematic and comprehensive risk assessment methodology used to identify and evaluate risks in each life-cycle phase of complex engineered systems across different industry sectors (e.g., chemical, avionics, aerospace, etc.). The classic PRA approach involves techniques such as fault tree (FT) and event tree (ET), which leverage a Boolean logic to describe the formation of system failures by means of basic events. The accuracy of this approach decreases when the retrieval of probabilistic information about failures is difficult. However, it is still used to compare evaluated risks with predefined risk rankings in order to support improvement during the system design and development phases.

Chapter Contents:

• 15.1 Risk assessment overview
• 15.2 Risk assessment workflow
• 15.3 Static versus dynamic safety risk scenarios
• 15.4 Probabilistic risk model
• 15.5 Application to the case study
• 15.5.1 Safety critical factor identification
• 15.5.2 Risk analysis
• 15.5.3 Risk scenario development
• 15.5.4 Probabilistic risk model
• 15.5.5 PRM analysis and risk evaluation

Inspec keywords: risk management; probability

Other keywords: risk management approach; probabilistic risk assessment; predefined risk rankings; risk assessment methodology; Boolean logic; PRA approach; system design phase; system development phase

Subjects: Management issues; Statistics