System Safety Engineering and Risk Assessment HSSE WORLD

System Safety Engineering and Risk Assessment A Practical Approach, Second Edition by Nicholas J. Bahr. This book will give both industry and government the practical insight and concrete success stories to make this happen. The purpose of this book is to give engineers and managers, working in companies and governments around the world, a pragmatic and reasonable approach to system safety and risk assessment techniques and to design viable safety management systems. It is written in easy-to-understand language that gives you the tools to implement tested solutions immediately.

Table of Contents

WHY DO WE NEED SAFETY ENGINEERING?
It is difficult to go on the Internet, open a newspaper, or turn on the television and not be reminded of how dangerous our world is. Both large-scale natural and man-made disasters seem to occur on an almost daily basis and are seemingly never-ending. An accident at a plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984, killed over 2500 people. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami in 2011 triggered a series of fires and explosions at a commercial nuclear power plant in Japan, resulting in three of the six reactors melting down and over 100,000 residents permanently evacuated.
Though there is a downward trend in fatal accidents in the United States and many other countries, recent high-profile accidents still command headlines worldwide. In 2011, a Chinese high-speed train collided into another killing 38 people. In the Gulf of Mexico, the oil company at the center of the worst oil spill in history put aside $41 billion in 2010 to pay for damages from the spill. An automobile airbag manufacturing plant exploded, killing one worker after it had had over 21 fire emergencies in 1 year. Swarms of helicopters with television cameras were drawn to the plant after every call, creating a public relations nightmare and forcing the government to shut down the plant temporarily.

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An airliner crashed into an apartment building in downtown Sao Paolo, Brazil, killing all on board and many in the apartment building. The Air France Concorde went from a 27-year record of zero crashes to a single crash in July 2000, killing 100 passengers and 9 crew members, becoming one of the worst aircraft-type safety records (due to the low frequency of flights).

In June 2009, the new Airbus A330 flying from South America to Europe experienced an aerodynamic stall, caused by inconsistent sensor readings and inadequate pilot response, and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 on board, resulting in the highest death toll of any aircraft type worldwide. Although it was the first crash while on a commercial passenger flight, it was the second fatal accident of the new design. After hitting a flock of geese, a commercial airliner miraculously landed safely, without loss of life, in the Hudson River right off of Manhattan in New York City.

The April 2010 crash of the Polish Air Force Tu-154, likely due to human error, killed the current president and his wife, the national Polish bank president, chief of Polish general staff, deputy foreign minister, 15 members of parliament, and other political notables.

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