Notes
Slide Show
Outline
1
Safety
  • System & Scene
2
Overview
  • Safety Terms
  • Hazards
  • Hazard Lists
  • Worst Case Conditions
  • Hazard Characteristics
  • Analysis
  • Sumary



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Safety Terms
  • Hazard: Condition with potential to injure
  • Danger: Exposure to hazard
  • Damage: Severity of injury
  • Risk: Probability of occurrence times damage (RHI)
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Hazard
  • Types:
    • Primary Hazard: Immediate damaging causing
    • Initiating Hazard: Starts event sequence leading to damage ( rope abrasion leading to reduced tensile strength and ultimate failure)
    • Contributing Hazard: Subordinate hazard adding to the ultimate failure of a system ( inadequate Belay System rigging, fails in Main failure)
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Hazard Lists
  • Hazard lists are the first step in recognizing hazards and preventing damage
  • Development: (best lists use combination)
    • Past experience
    • Theoretical possibility  ( What can you imagine)
    • Predictive testing ( rope testing… load, abrasion, UV etc)
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Safety & Murphy’s Law*
  • Worst case scenario
    • Max loads
    • Most serious outcomes
    • Combined events ( UV, Abrasion, Overloads)
    • Ignores probability of occurance
  • *“If something can go wrong it will”
    • “It will go wrong at the worst possible time”
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Categories of Hazards
  • Inherent Hazard: Properties or characteristics of system make it hazardous (High angle rope systems, working hi-voltage)
  • Failures (material or human): Rope fails under load ( material defect), knot lets go ( tied incorrectly)
  • Environmental stresses: Lightning strike, Wind shear, UV degredation, “Acts of God”



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Accidents
  • Failure to prevent damage
    • Almost all accidents can be traced to human error (although not necessarily the primary hazard event).
    • May not be on the part of the immediate victims ( may be dissociated in time and space from accident event,  for example: poor rope maintenance/inspection)
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Human Error
  • 2 types ( also like hazards may be primary or contributory)
    • Predictable: “could have been expected” usually driven by:
      • Fatigue
      • Sensory limitations ( poor visibility etc)
      • Physical limitations ( coordination etc)
    • Random: “unpredictable” unexpected or unusual sequence of events, no history of similar occurrences, driven by a rare or unique event


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Minimizing Human Error
  • 2 Man Concept
    • Credited to the Military to minimize potential for human error in nuclear system procedures
    • Probably goes back to the first attempts at controlling risky processes.
  • Training ( most human error occurs under stress and haste, training minimizes error under stress
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Accidents and Human Error
  • Accidents rarely occur due to willful actions
  • Most are situations in which human capabilities are inadequate or overwhelmed by the “Need for rapid response to a critical situation”
    • Inadequacies can be permanent or transient
      • Permanent: Physical limitations, lack of training
      • Transient: Fatigue, communications breakdown


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Hazards and Accidents
  • Accidents occur when”
  • Hazards potential to cause damage reaches a probability of 1
  • This leads to 2 obvious approaches to safety:
    • Minimize hazards
    • Reduce probability



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Accident Analysis Vs. Hazard Analysis
  • Accident Analysis is Post Mortum
  • Hazard Analysis is predictive in nature
  • Hazard Analyses are conducted on systems
  • A system is all the components which combine to perform a function…. Rope, anchors, prussics, people!
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Safety Factors & Margins
  • Safety Factors are a ratio of strength to expected stress
  • Safety Margins are the difference between max stress and min strength
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Hazard Analyses
  • Qualitative- non-mathmatical
    • A review of potential hazards, excluding probabilities
  • Quantitative- must be preceded by qualitative review
    • Probability of occurrence of a specific failure mode, based on history or speculation.
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Hazard Analysis
  • Requires review of:
    • Mission requirements
    • Performance capabilities
    • Operational sequence
    • Environmental impacts
    • Codes, regulations, specifications, standards


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Probability
  • Probability is the expectancy of frequency with which an event will occur in a specific number of trials
  • Determined by
    • Actuarial methods ( using historical data)
    • Experimental methods (test and count failures)
    • Predictive models ( usually based on similarity to known systems )
  • Heads/Tails 100K trials 50K heads.. Next flip 50/50.. Individual event is could be any outcome
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Failure Modes, Effects, & Capability Analyses- FMECA
  • Review of component failure modes
    • Fails How?
  • Effects of such failure will have on the rest of the system
  • Establish which part failures would have critical (catastrophic) impacts on the system
  • Calculate the probability of such failures
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RHI- Relative Hazard Index
  • RHI- probability of event occurrence times expected damage if event occurs
  • A quick way to prioritize safety issues
20
Risk
  • Risk is a method of comparing relative hazard exposures
  • RHI is a risk measure
  • Hazard analyses which include both qualitative hazards and quantitative probability of  hazard damage can also be used to rank or compare risks
21
Summary
  • Safety is “No Accident”
  • Prevent accidents by:
    • Mitigating hazards
    • Mitigating probability of occurrences
  • Evaluate hazards thru analyses
  • Compare Risks between options