The course deals with the risk assessment of technical systems, a tool to guarantee safety for personnel and population, environment and asset protection against daily and major accidents.

Basically, at the end of the course students will be able to manage properly concepts such as safety, hazard, risk and to approach their future daily professional choices using a risk based approach.
From a technical point of view, they will be able to organise a risk assessment for a complex technical system using the tools presented in this course and collecting their knowledge resulting from previous courses:
comprehension of a technical system starting from description and drawings;
identification of the related hazards;
selection of the potential accidental sequences;
estimation of accident probabilities by RAM (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability) analysis;
estimation of damage extension in case of major accident, by simplified methods;
identification of the preventive and mitigation measures for risk control.
The application of these concepts and tools to a real study case will be performed during practical lectures by team working; these are set in order to train students in the typical approach adopted for professional risk analysis, where several specialist contribute for a common goal.

Fundamentals on physics, chemistry, thermodynamics and fluid mechanics; fundamentals on oil&gas systems and operations.

1. The Risk concept: definition, assessment, perception and tolerability.
2. Role of Risk in the International Legislation and technical Standards
3. Methodologies for the risk assessment:
* Elements on the Boolean algebra and probability theory,
* Hazard identification,
* Methodologies for the reliability assessment of complex systems,
* Methodologies for the study of accidental sequences,
* Risk Assessment.
4. Insights on the reliability theory and RAM (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability) analyses:
* RAM characterisation of elementary components,
* Reliability Data Banks,
* Calculation of unreliability and unavailability for complex systems,
* Criticality Indexes.
5. Major hazards:
* EU and Italian legislation,
* Description of accidental phenomena (loss of containment, fires, explosions, gas dispersion),
* Vulnerability analysis,
* Emergency planning and management.

One third of the course will be spent for practical application of risk analysis. Students have to apply the contents of the lectures to perform a safety assessment of a part of a real industrial plant. They have to prepare a report describing the analysis performed, that will be discussed during the final exam.

Lecture notes prepared by the teacher; material can be downoloaded by the POLITO Didactic Portal.
Other books suggested for personal deepening:
' F.P. Lees, Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, Elsevier, 1996;
' AIChE /CCPS, Guidelines for Quantitative Risk Analysis, 2000;
' Vinnem, Quantified Risk Assessment for Offshore Petroleum Installations, NTNU Trondheim Norway, 1997;
' NUREG, PRA Procedures Guide, CR2300, 1983;
' Mc Cormick, Reliability and Risk Analysis, Academic Press, 1981;
' Kletz, HAZOP & HAZAN, Inst. Chem. Eng., 1986;
' TNO, Methods for the Calculation of Physical Effects (Yellow Boook), 1997;
' TNO, Methods for the determination of possible damage, (Green Boook), 1989.

The final exam consists in:
' a short written session (3 questions) where each student has to demonstrate its comprehension on concepts and methods;
' an oral session where each student discusses the work done by its team during practical lectures, consisting in the application of risk analysis to a real industrial case.
The access to the oral session is allowed if two out of three written questions are right. The final mark is mainly based on the oral discussion.