Historical Developments of Safety and

Reliability Assessment
1930s
The first concepts concerning the safety and reliability levels of
aircraft came into being.

1940s
Courses and books on safety and reliability analysis, as well
as on the related statistical techniques, grew in number.

1950s
Attention was increasingly centred on safety matters,
especially in the aeronautical and nuclear industries.

The use of parameters characterising the reliability of

components spread.
1960s
Some new reliability and safety analysis techniques together with a
wider variety of applications.

The fault tree concept was introduced by Bell Telephone Laboratory

and further developed by the Boeing company.

The Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) method

was introduced.

1970s
The fault tree analysis was extensively adopted in other “high
technology” industries.

The Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened.

Probabilistic Risk Analysis methods were recommended to be

increasingly used.
1980s
Reliability, availability, maintainability and safety assessment
techniques tended to be adopted on a wide scale to control and to
manage major industrial hazards.

Safety became a distinct engineering discipline for engineering

design.

The importance of failure and repair data collection programmes was

realised.

1990s
Proactive “goal-setting” approaches (safety cases) were introduced.

2000s
More flexible methods have been developed.
Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA)
Probabilistic risk analysis includes both qualitative and quantitative
analysis. It can be carried out on either a top-down or a bottom-up
basis.

Qualitative safety analysis is used to locate possible hazards and to

identify proper precautions (design changes, administrative
procedures, etc) that will reduce the frequencies or consequences
of such hazards.

The general steps in a qualitative system safety analysis are to:

1. Identify significant hazards.

2. Display the above information in a table, a chart, a fault tree
or other format.

The consequences of a hazard can be classified as one of the

four severity categories “catastrophic”, “Critical”, “Marginal”
and “Negligible”.
The occurrence probability of a hazard can be described using the
levels “Frequent”, “Probable”, “Occasional” and “Remote”.
Categories Description Equipment Personnel Environment
I Catastrophi System loss Death Severe damage
c
II Critical Major system Severe injury or Major damage
damage severe occupational
illness

III Marginal Minor system Minor injury or minor Minor damage

damage occupational illness

IV Negligible Less than minor Less than minor Negligible damage

system damage injury or minor
occupational illness

Level Description Frequency

1 Frequent Likely to happen

2 Probable Several times during lifetime

3 Occasional Likely to happen once

4 Remote Unlikely but possible during lifetime

 Frequent Probable Occasional Remote
1 2 3 4
Catastrophic (I) I-1 I-2 I-3 I-4
Critical (II) II-1 II-2 II-3 II-4
Marginal (III) III-1 III-2 III-3 III-4
Negligible (IV) IV-1 IV-2 IV-3 IV-4

Design action is required to eliminate or control hazards classified as

I-1, I-2, I-3, II-1, II-2 and III-1;
hazard consequences must be controlled or hazard probabilities must
be reduced for hazards classified as III-2, II-3 and I-4;
hazard control is desirable for hazards classified as III-3 and II-4 if
cost-effective and
no design action is normally required for hazards classified as III-4,
IV-1, IV-2. IV-3 and IV-4.
Typical outcomes of a quantitative safety analysis include the
occurrence probability of each system failure event and the
magnitude of possible consequences caused by its
occurrence.