The application of System Dynamics to industrial plants in the perspective of Process Resilience Engineering

Abstract

Resilience can be defined as the ability of a system to recover from any failure or disturbance. In this light, Resilience Engineering should be then devoted to the comprehension of the evolution of any system when losing its dynamic stability, due to the erosion of safety level. Recently, several authors have discussed over the significance and possibility of applying these concepts to industrial safety. In their view, any methodology for resilience differs from classical risk assessment as it depends on either known or unknown initiating-accident events. Or, resilience can be assumed as the ability of the industrial system to sustain required operational safety under both expected and unexpected conditions. This definition can be defined if holistic risk assessment is adopted. To this aim, however, due to the intrinsic complexity of the analysis, specific tools as System Dynamics (and Causal Loop Diagrams) are suggested for the quantitative evaluation of resilience of industrial systems. In this paper, this opportunity has been preliminary evaluated and the application for a simple storage plant of LPG is presented.