Using Ontologies to Support Model-based Exploration of the Dependencies between Causes and Consequences of Hazards
Abigail Parisaca Vargas, Robin Bloomfield · 2015
Hazard identification and hazard analysis are difficult and essential parts of safety engineering. These activities are very demanding and mostly manual. There is an increasing need for improved analysis tools and techniques. In this paper we report research that focuses on supporting the early stages of hazard identification. A state-based hazard analysis process is presented to explore dependencies between causes and consequences of hazards. The process can be used to automate the analysis of preliminary hazard worksheets with the aims of making them more precise, disambiguating causal relationships, and supporting the proper definition of system boundaries. An application example is presented for a railway system.