A novel methodology to measure safety level of a process plant using a system theory based method (STAMP)

•A hazard analysis technique based on systems theory (STPA) is extended to measure safety level of a process plant. Major accidents continue to happen in the process industry and often have serious consequences. There are questions on how these accidents happen and how we can monitor safety in a process plant to prevent these accidents. In order to explain how accidents happen, different accident causation models have been used, whereas most of them were developed long time ago. Significant changes have occurred in the industry and traditional models may have limitations in identifying causes of accidents in modern industry within complex sociotechnical environment. Consequently, new accident models based on systems theory have been developed lately. Safety is often measured by number of accidents, mishaps or near misses. This retrospective approach cannot help enough to prevent accidents. In this paper, a novel methodology is introduced to measure safety level in process plants with the purpose of preventing accidents. This methodology is based on Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP), which is one of the systemic accident model developed recently. The methodology is tested using real data from a process plant and obtained promising results are provided in this paper.