Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904

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Reliability Engineering and System Safety

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Evidence based risk analysis of fire and explosion accident scenarios

in FPSOs
U. Bhardwaj a, A.P. Teixeira a, *, C. Guedes Soares a, A.K. Ariffin b, S.S. Singh b
a
Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering (CENTEC), Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
b
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The paper proposes a methodology for risk assessment and probabilistic modelling of fire and explosion accidents
FPSO in Floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) units. The overall objective of the paper is to propose a
Risk analysis Bayesian Network probabilistic framework towards quantification of fire and explosion events in FPSOs derived
Bayesian networks
from a systematic analysis of incidental and accidental scenarios specific to FPSOs. A data set of around 800
Chi-square test
Accident and incident
incidents in FPSOs from various open-source agencies is prepared and analysed. The key features of the incidents
Causal factors are discussed and the relationships amongst the significant variables influencing the types of incidents are
assessed. The circumstances of potential incidents related to fire and explosions are discussed. A detailed risk
analysis is conducted using the risk matrix approach to screen and rank the major accidents occurring in FPSOs.
Then, a Bayesian Network model of high-risk fire and explosion scenarios is developed based on evidences
obtained from accident reports and expert opinions. The model uses a framework based on immediate causes,
basic causes and causal factors to demonstrate various accidental scenarios specific to FPSOs. A sensitivity
analysis is conducted to identify the most important causal factors and the aspects that need more research work
for decision-making. The contribution of the present study is threefold: a methodology for comprehensive risk
assessment in FPSOs is proposed; FPSO specific incidents and accidents are characterized; a probabilistic model
for fire and explosion scenarios is developed from a causal framework. The results of the paper provide FPSO
developers and operators with information to prevent and mitigate fire and explosion accidents.

1. Introduction functions more efficiently, conveniently and economically [5]. FPSOs

As the oil and gas industry moves to deeper waters for hydrocarbon
exploitation, the need of mobile floating production systems further
increases. The Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) units
have emerged as leading offshore mobile installations that not only
facilitate production of hydrocarbons but also process them at topside
and storage in the hull area [1,2]. The number of FPSOs around the
world has been increasing in recent years, making them preferable
choice than other floating units [3,4].
An FPSOs is a typical ship-like vessel with processing equipment
built in modules, which are positioned on the vessel deck. The produc­
tion fluid (hydrocarbon) is transferred from underwater to the FPSO
topside via risers. The fluid is then separated into oil, gas, water and gas
at topside facilities; the oil and gas are processed and then stored in the
hull. Then, oil and gas are periodically offloaded to shuttle tankers.
Amongst all floating units, FPSOs are capable of performing various
offer additional benefits such as they are faster to build and adaptable to
different water depth [6]. Moreover, its ship-like feature makes it
preferable over other offshore installations such as tension leg platform,
jackups and spars [6].
However, high level of congestion due to pipelines network and
topside crude processing equipment inflict higher risk in FPSOs [7]. As
FPSOs often work in extreme weather conditions, the risk can never be
underestimated and thus become major area of research interest. [8,9].
Moreover, the complex system and equipment need expert human op­
erators, robust technical infrastructure and organizational support for its
safe operation [8,10]. Safety in FPSOs is defined as the protection of life,
health, property and environment [7] and therefore reasonable mea­
sures have to be taken to reduce the risk [10]. Risk assessment is an
efficient tool for decision-making, to prevent, mitigate and recover from
potential accidents.
In general, the ‘risk’ concept itself may not fully reflect the risk

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: teixeira@centec.tecnico.ulisboa.pt (A.P. Teixeira).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2021.107904
Received 15 March 2021; Received in revised form 15 June 2021; Accepted 30 June 2021
Available online 8 July 2021
0951-8320/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
U. Bhardwaj et al.
description. Further, risk factors such as human, organizational and
environmental factors increase the occurrence of hazardous scenarios
and may escalate them [11]. With such factors, minor events in a FPSO
may escalate into a disaster in a matter of minutes [12]. From the history
of accidents, it can be stated that accidents tend to increase when a loss
of knowledge occurs and conversely, updating the knowledge will help
in reducing the accident occurrence [13,14].
It has previously been observed that FPSO accidents are low proba­
bility – high consequence events in nature [15]. According to WOAD,
based on data from 1970 to 2012, FPSO is the fourth offshore unit type
regarding the number of incidents per unit and amongst all floating units
they have the highest incidence rate (3.29 per unit) [16]. The injury
rates in FPSOs remain the highest amongst all floating units and com­
parable to all facilities in Australia [17]. Over the analysis from 1996 to
2002, FPSOs have twice the rate of incident occurrences compared with
statistics for all offshore installations [18].
In the context of FPSOs analysis, there is a general lack of accident
and incident data and similar vessel (large oil tankers) data is used
instead [19]. Fig. 1 presents statistical trends of occurrence of accidents,
incidents and injuries from analysis of National Offshore Petroleum
Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) [17],
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) [20,21] and Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) databases [22]. It is evident that
accidents, incidents and injuries all show an increasing trend and
appreciable high numbers. The severity of accidents, incidents and in­
juries are discussed in the respective database and so not replicated here.
The definitions of basic terms from the databases are given in
Appendix A. These trends are sufficient to corroborate the statement of
FPSO being the most hazard-prone offshore mobile unit.
These databases only cover some specific region of the world for a
given timeline and do not record any disastrous incident involving ca­
sualty, major damage to property or environment. However, such di­
sasters are evident and some notable accidents in the last decade are
presented in Appendix B. It is therefore vital to model and analyse such
incidences by an adequate risk framework. The causal network, proba­
bilities and sensitivities of basic causes can inform designers and oper­
ators to take countermeasures.
The research community has dedicated efforts to understand how
and why an accident occurs. Consequently, studies are devoted to
developing accident models and techniques to elaborate accident
causation to happening [23,24]. A literature review revealed that most
of the work is limited to a specific sector of industry, for instance, pro­
cessing industry [25]. A few studies are seen for the offshore oil and gas
industry, however, the focus of the respective studies have been the
specific hazardous event and frameworks are rather generalized than an
installation-specific [26–29]. Operation in different industries varies
with the type of equipment used, the environment and expertise of
personnel. Consequently, accident modelling becomes challenging with
the increase in complexity in the structure and operation of the
socio-technical system [30–32].
Within the offshore oil and gas industry, the operational condition
varies with water depth, exploration field, sea state and distance from
shore which are the basis for the selection of appropriate installation
[1]. Thus, a generalized analysis for all installations may not be suitable
Fig. 1. Trends of accidents (a), incidents (b) and injuries (c) in FPSOs from NOPSEMA, HSE and BSEE data.
2
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
to identify causes behind an accident specific to an installation. What is
striking about FPSOs is that they have a different structure [1,2], tech­
nical challenges [6] and risk picture [9,15]. Previous investigation
indicated that around 20% of incidents in FPSOs are specific to the FPSO
system and not present on other fixed installations [18].
Another approach to address key features of accidents is via accident
modelling. However, many of these models are complex and sometimes
too detailed, understanding and implementation of which would require
plenty of time. Reviews of existing models identify that there exist large
variations in the level of usefulness for decision-making. In particular,
the quantitative models have certain advantages over qualitative models
[25]. Concerning FPSO, it is vital to know how accurately the model can
present the real system behaviour with risk factors and result of risk [32,
33]. To facilitate a more flexible and representative description of the
real world risk for a complex sociotechnical system like the FPSO, new
methods like Bayesian Belief Networks are required [7].
To cope with such issues, evidence-based risk analysis may lead to
obtain more reliable and realistic solutions. Contrary to a model that is
purely hypothetical due to their construction entirely by expert opinion
and thus merely on the intuition of the developers, evidence-based
models are supported by data from real scenarios [34].
To achieve the above-stated goal, the present study is focused on
presenting the most promising framework for risk assessment for major
FPSO accidents. First, data are collected from publicly available inves­
tigation reports, papers and online articles. Following FPSO risk
assessment procedures [35], a holistic approach encompassing all in­
cidents are considered. A common context is developed listing incidents,
their circumstances and consequences. The statistics of hazardous events
(incidents) is presented. Furthermore, the chi-square method for inde­
pendence testing is used to identify the statistically significant re­
lationships amongst incident types and other variables, which are
considered to be related to them. The results of this test may help in
identifying the complexity of incident characteristics. Circumstances of
potential incidents related to fire and explosions are discussed. Next, the
risk matrix approach is utilized to screen the accidents from the study of
around 100 accident descriptions and the accidents are ranked
accordingly.
Then, a causal framework is developed to account for immediate,
intermediate and basic causes of the incidents. The collected evidential
data are further used to develop probabilistic risk model for assessing
the probability and the contributing factors on fire and explosions,
which is the main accident type in FPSOs. Bayesian Network (BN) is
utilized for modelling as it is a powerful tool to incorporate in­
terdependencies amongst the factors involved. It also allows the user to
represent a multivariate state of causal factors compared to the binary
representations provided by Fault trees. Besides many other advantages,
BN allows the incorporation of expert elicitation in the model when
relevant data is scarce. Using canonical nodes, advance computation can
be performed, moreover, uncertainties can be included. This study also
aims to identify the crucial causes responsible for major accidents (Fire
and explosions) in FPSOs through sensitivity analysis. Finally, three
common causal factors - human, organizational and environmental
factors influencing the basic causes are assessed to identify their relative
influence on the accidents.
U. Bhardwaj et al.
The present methodology aims at characterizing major accident
scenarios from past accident data using a BN model. The model can be
further updated with more incident data when available. The main po­
tential causal factors can be identified and subsequently be controlled
through implementing safety measures.
The remainder of this paper is organized in different sections. Fire
and explosion accident scenarios in FPSOs are discussed in Section 2.
Section 3 describes the theory of the Bayesian Network. Section 4 pre­
sents the proposed evidence-based risk assessment methodology. Data
collection from open-source agencies is explained in Section 5. FPSO
incident data is analysed and characterised followed by few hypotheses’
tests by the chi-square method. Section 7 details the Risk matrix
approach to screen several accident cases. After categorizing the risk
influencing factors, the BN model framework for most probable acci­
dents is developed in Section 9. Comprehensive probabilistic analyses
with an illustration of the model and important findings are detailed in
this section. A discussion on various aspects of this analysis is presented
in Section 10, followed by the conclusion drawn in Section 11.
2. Fire and explosion accident on FPSO
As any other offshore facility processing oil and gas, FPSOs are sus­
ceptible to risk of hydrocarbon release, which when ignited results in
fire or explosion disaster [36–38]. The heat and explosion pose serious
threats to safety, assets and the surrounding environment [24,39].
Though rare still, one recent explosion incident in a FPSO has costed 26
lives and environmental damages [40]. The safety cases adopted in
different regions worldwide strive to develop design and operational
strategies to minimize such hazards from occurring [17]. An accidental
release of hydrocarbon and a source of ignition are the two most
important events (causes) that lead to such accident scenario when they
simultaneously exist. The conventional method of preliminary hazard
analysis, fault tree, event tree are often unable to identify frequency of
hydrocarbon release and ignition probability properly [41]. Therefore,
it is deemed important to understand the probability of such accident in
a more realistic way. Statistical released data are required for efficient
and adequate causal analysis of fire and explosion scenarios in the
offshore sector [42].
The Joint industry project (JIP) – Explosion and Fire Engineering of
FPSO (EFEF) has developed more refined approach to calculate fre­
quency of fires and explosions [43]. In their quantitative assessment,
Paik et al. [43] have derived net frequency of release and fire from HSE
database while lesser attention paid on subsequent causes. Suardin et al.
[36] have developed a fire and explosion risk assessment tool which is
rather a quantitative approach and highly particular to the case chosen.
Some simulation methods can also be implemented to create plausible
fire and explosion scenario using Computational Fluid Dynamics pro­
gram and for structural response of FPSO [41,44,45]. amongst the
leading industrial efforts, the Global Explosion Consultants (Gexcon) is
committed in the field of safety and risk management and advanced
dispersion, explosion and fire modelling. Their developed tools, such as
FLACS-CFD [46] and Shell FRED are specifically consequence modelling
softwares that can also be utilised for explosion prediction in the
offshore sector [47]. A novel approach of fire risk analysis has been
proposed by Jin and Jang [38] that applied the concept of cumulative
failure frequency to the safety evaluation of FPSOs. However, the leak
frequency that can significantly influence the results was calculated
approximately. Another relevant study [48] has simulated the conse­
quences of FPSO fire and explosions by the PHAST tool while the fre­
quency is estimated using event tree model based on historical data.
Such analyses are rather consequence analyses than causal ones and
thus may provide a different risk perspective. Some frequency analyses
have proposed predictive models for fire and explosion risk [26,43,48,
49]. Though such models dig deep to predict risk, yet they often lack
cause and effect analyses. Conversely, effect analyses [29,50–52] have
addressed the issue of offshore fire risk with the objective of formulating
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Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
relationships between causes (errors) and effects (risk). However, much
emphasis is given on human and organizational errors. This research has
performed a more comprehensive installation specific study by inte­
grating some elements of both frequency and effect analyses. Conse­
quently, fire and explosion scenarios can be modelled (by BNs) from real
data with the objective to identify the most likely circumstances, i.e.,
states of the cause variables that may occur [52].
3. Bayesian network
Bayesian Network has been used in many sectors as a tool for risk
modelling and analysis with uncertainty [53–56]. The use of BN in the
maritime industry has been discussed by Zhang and Thai [57]. The ad­
vantages of BN over other methods like Fault Trees and Event Trees are
obvious and discussed [57]. Although some probabilistic analyses can be
performed by fault trees, BNs are preferable due to their flexibility and
advanced features [58]. Dynamic BNs have been used in many
time-varying probabilistic inference problems such as for probabilistic
modelling of the burst failure of corroded oil and gas pipelines [59].
The Bayesian Network (BN) is a direct acyclic graphical (DAG)
network. BN is composed of nodes and arcs that represent a probabilistic
framework. The basic random variables are represented by nodes, while
arcs present relationships amongst them. The arcs connect the child
nodes with its parent nodes. These relationships in BNs describe the
dependencies amongst the basic and dependant variables. For example,
if a variable Yi has an impact on Yj, Yi is called a parent node of Yj.
The basic structure of a BN network displays the qualitative
description. Quantitative relationships amongst variables are described
by the Conditional Probability Tables (CPT) of discrete variables. A CPT
provides a complete description of probabilistic interaction that can
model any probabilistic dependencies between a child and parent nodes.
The foundation of BN is Bayes theory, which is expressed as
P(B|A)P(A)
P(A|B) = (1)
P(B)
where P(A|B) is known as posterior probability that how likely is event A
is, given evidence of B, P(B|A) is the likelihood which represents how
likely the evidence B is true, P(A) is the prior probability of event A, P(B)
is the prior probability of event B.
A BN represents the joint probability distribution for a set of discrete
random variables Y, where Y can be given as
Y = (Y1 , Y2 , Y3 ……Yn ) (2)
where n is number of discrete random variables. The joint probability
distribution of Y (Eq. (2)) can be calculated by taking the product of all
priors and their conditional probability distribution.
∏
n
P(y1 , y2 , y3 ⋯⋯yn ) = P(yi |pa(yi )) (3)
i=1
where, the term P(yi|pa(yi)) is the conditional probability of yi given its
parent variables (pa(yi)).
3.1. Canonical probabilistic nodes
The BN model can be customized with canonical probabilistic nodes
that can reduce computational time by simplifying the model. In case of
a general chance binary node with m binary parents, the user has to
specify 2m parameters, however canonical nodes reduce that require­
ment to m parameters. Noisy-OR and leaky Noisy-OR are the example of
canonical nodes.
A child variable Y may have numerous causes X1, X2…….Xm. Noisy-
OR gates are applicable with two assumptions: (i) If each of the cause X1,
X2…. Xm have corresponding probability p1, p2…. pm that are sufficient to
cause Y independently, in the absence of other causes. (ii) Each of the
U. Bhardwaj et al.
causes X1, X2…. Xm are mutually independent. This model requires
probabilities pi = p1, p2…. pm that is probability given one cause is true
while all other causes are false. Therefore, the probability pi can be given
by:
pi = P(y|x1 , x2 , ⋯xn ) (4)
where, x and x are the two complimentary states of variable X. Using the
Eq. (4) the required CPT of variable Y can be completed.
Another great advantage of canonical models is that they can be
adopted to account for the uncertainties in the probabilities of evident
variables. By means of leak probabilities (l), the model can show
occurrence probability of variable Y despite all its cause are false. In the
present scheme, leaky noise gate is applicable to account the occurrence
of various causes that have insufficient data.
Some uncertainties still exist in modelling with BN due to probabil­
ities used and quantification of expert opinion. Epistemic uncertainties
are often addressed using probability density function rather than using
discrete probability values. To assess uncertainties in BNs, some well-
known methods like Taylor series and Monte Carlo simulations can
also be used [60].
3.2. Sensitivity analysis
One significant element of a BN analysis is to identify the most
important input parameters through sensitivity analysis. The objective
of a sensitivity analysis is to assess the influence of changes in the input
parameters on a model output of interest. This is a vital step for any risk
assessment as it provides insights on model robustness and is also used
for model validation [61]. The simplest measure of sensitivity is pro­
vided by the partial derivative of a relevant output with respect to a
particular model input parameter, which is a local measure of sensitivity
as the derivative is typically observed at a particular point of the space of
the input parameters.
3.2.1. Parameter sensitivity analysis
In case of BN models, a parameter sensitivity analysis assesses the
effect on the target variable of introducing, systematically, an evidence
on a state variable while keeping the other variables unchanged. The
result yields the variables that have the largest influence on the target
variable of interest. Some BN software tools, such as GENIE [62,63]
provide this parameter sensitivity measure by calculating one-way de­
rivatives. In particular, every conditional and prior probability in BN is
varied in turn, keeping the others unchanged. Further details of this
method can be referred from the studies [64,65]. The results of para­
metric sensitivity analysis over a complex BN models can be arduous as
they involve a large number of sensitivity measures estimated for each
entry of the marginal and conditional probability tables of all variables
of the models.
3.2.2. Sensitivity to evidence
Another significant way that provides insights into the properties of
models and their robustness is sensitivity to evidence. This approach
accounts the variations of the BN’s posterior probability distribution
under various conditions using mainly two types of measures, entropy
and mutual information (also known as variance reduction for contin­
uous variables) [66]. Following to this method, a sensitivity measure is
adopted in this study as described below.
The variation in the probability of basic events (variable Yi) from
prior to posterior is observed when the state of target node (final event)
is changed to 100%. The indicating term can be coined as change ratio
(CRYi ) given by:
Prob.after setting the final event to 100% − Prior prob.of Yi
CRYi = (5)
Prior probability of Yi
A global measure of the importance of the variable Yi on the final
4
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
event is then defined based on Change ratio as:
CRYi
SYi = √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
∑m (6)
2
i=1 (CRYi )
The results of sensitivity analysis are presented in later section that
identify the factors with the greatest importance in major accident
scenarios in FPSOs.
4. Methodology
There are a number of differences in safety philosophy for FPSOs and
other manned units or fixed offshore installations [35]. For instance,
FPSO operations are complex and operated in harsh environmental
conditions, involving different factors responsible for causing accidents
[12,18]. The major categories include state of the weather, training of
on-board crew, use of specific equipment and human factors [1]. For
example, the fire scenarios in FPSOs involve failures of processing
equipment that is not present in ships. The FPSO’s motion influenced by
severe weather conditions can also be a cause for many incidents, which
is not present in fixed offshore installations. Thus, a FPSO specific ac­
cident scenario and corresponding modelling is necessary.
Fig. 2 shows the framework of the proposed methodology, and the
procedure is explained as follows. First, raw data are collected from
primary sources like databases [17,18,20,21,67], disaster reports like
[40,68] and websites [69–72]. Secondary sources of data are composed
of a deep review of published statistical investigation reports [73–76],
expert assessments on risk [77,78] and analysis of primary (incidental)
data [15,79,80]. To evaluate major risks in FPSOs, the obtained and
analysed data is screened, and the major accidents are ranked. The
major accidents are highlighted, and relevant data are again analysed to
formulate a causal framework. Evidential data and expert opinions are
used to build a BN model, followed by the parametrization of all the
nodes. Finally, the probability of final accident can be computed, and
the sensitivities of basic causes can be obtained.
5. Data collection
This section describes the collection of historical accident and inci­
dental data. There are several sources of information on offshore acci­
dents and incidents: research papers, government and industrial reports,
newspaper articles and accident database [14]. Some of the available
offshore oil and gas accident databases are WOAD (World Offshore
Accident Database) by DNV (Det Norske Veritas), ORION by UK HSE
Offshore Safety Department, MAIB by UK DFT Dept. Environment,
Transport and the Regions and PTIL by PSA(Petroleum Safety Authority)
BLOWOUT by SINTEF of Norway DEA/EASY (Danish Energy Agency) by
Denmark, WCID (Well Control Incident Database) by IAOGP (Interna­
tional Association of Oil and Gas Producers), Common reporting format
project NSOAF (North Sea Offshore Authorities Forum), Performance
Measurement Project IRF (International Regulators’ Forum).
In this study, the HSE, NOPSEMA and BSEE databases with extensive
information are used as primary data to understand and characterize
accidents and incidents [14]. Besides, more reports from HSE, WOAD,
and papers are consulted to provide credible accident scenarios exclu­
sively for FPSOs [20,73,81]. It is important to note that different data­
bases use different taxonomies in terms of severity and accidents types
(see Appendix A) and may create difficulties amongst the terms when
evaluating them [14,82]. Thus, the present study assumes accidents as
an unintended event (mostly terminal) that involve fatality or serious
personal injury or significant damage to the environment or to the
structure, whereas an incident is a serious event or dangerous occur­
rence that has the potential for causing an accident. The present study
aims to categorize incidents and accidents into different groups for
analysis primarily using the HSE taxonomy (from Appendix A). In this
regard, the database created here may have some minor differences from
U. Bhardwaj et al.
Fig. 2. Proposed methodology for evidence-based risk analysis using Bayesian Networks.
their primary sources.
5.1. HSE database
HSE is a pioneer organization based in UK that accounts for health
and safety-related issues. The reports focus to record all (serious and
non-serious) incidents and study extensively for the causes behind them.
A large and descriptive set of UK Continental Shelf accident and incident
data has been obtained from [20]. It is believed that such a compilation
of information on FPSO accidents and incidents might be the most
comprehensive publicly available. From 1999 to 2006, three R&D pro­
jects were defined by the UK Health & Safety Executive-Offshore Safety
Division where the main objective was to obtain complete statistics for
accidents having occurred on floating offshore units engaged in the oil
and gas activities on the UKCS over 25 years, from 1980 to 2005. An
extended version of the HSE report [20] has been published later [21]
that covers the period from 1990 to 2007.
5.2. NOPSEMA data
National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management
Authority (NOPSEMA) of Australia publish yearly reports of the offshore
petroleum industry [17]. It shows statistics about accident and in­
cidents, moreover, presents the industry’s efforts to protect individuals
and environment and manage hazards, however, the main focus is on
human safety.
Viewing the hazards and risks to health and safety, the operator
submits a document known as safety case. In virtue of handling haz­
ardous occurrences, NOPSEMA assesses each safety case against its
safety regulations. NOPSEMA also takes action to enforce compliance
when it identifies non-compliance with obligations imposed by regula­
tors or for the sake of safety. Fig. 3 shows the year-wise safety cases and
enforcements per FPSO. At least one safety case and one enforcement
per year for each FPSO are acknowledged by NOPSEMA.
Fig. 3. Safety cases and enforcements issued by NOSEMA per FPSO in
recent years.
5
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
5.3. BSEE database
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement BSEE [22] ac­
counts for any hazardous incidents occurred within the US outer Con­
tinental Shelf. Their website on offshore incident compiles accident and
incident data with date, type of facility, description, etc. The public
released database by BSEE was undertaken from 2013 to 2017. The main
focus of these investigation reports is on personal injuries, still useful
information about causation can be obtained.
5.4. Other databases
WOAD is known to be one of the most abundant sources of world­
wide accident and incident data. However, their data are not available in
the public domain and need to be purchased. Some other useful data­
bases are eMARS [83], FACTS [84], ARIA [85], PSID [86] etc. The
reader may also refer the studies [14,15,82] for details on the source of
offshore databases and reporting systems.
6. Analysis of FPSO incidents
As recommended by Bai and Jin [35] if a risk assessment is applied to
a part or feature (Fire and explosion) of the FPSO, all hazards and
associated scenarios including the remote hazards (so called near miss
and insignificant incidents) across all bounds of the systems should be
considered.
This section aims at understanding the basic information about the
various hazards (incidents) and their key circumstances evidenced in
FPSOs. The publicly available databases, reports, papers and web arti­
cles are explored for descriptions of the accident and incidents that have
occurred on FPSOs.
6.1. Statistics of FPSO incidents
The superficial scrutiny of databases and reports for FPSOs provided
results as presented in Table 1. The important information regarding the
number of accidents, incidents, injuries and their rate of occurrence per
unit-year is provided. The figures obtained from different sources are
comparable with each other; however, some of the significant differ­
ences are due to population data and definition of incidents, accident
and injury (see Appendix A). The accident and incident rates are
appreciably high, indicating that FPSOs are more susceptible to hazards
amongst all mobile offshore units. One important point is that the data is
limited and only represent a small proportion of worldwide accidents.
Thus, the information in Table 1 reflects a lower bound of risk exposure
in FPSOs. The normalization of data from different sources (combined
data from HSE, NOPSEMA and BSEE) indicated that there are around 0.5
serious accidents; at least 3 incidents; 0.5 significant injuries per year
per FPSO unit.
6.2. Incident types in FPSO
A structured hazard identification process is adopted to conduct a
U. Bhardwaj et al.
Table 1
Incident data for FPSOs from different sources.
NOPSEMA (2005–2017) HSE (1990–2007)
Accident rate 0.36 0.23
Incident rate 10.25 3.04
Injury rate 0.53 0.19
Total accidents 60 44
Total incidents 1692 584
Total injuries 87 37
statistical analysis to identify the main hazards and operations. Not all
the stated incidents in Table 1 are elaborate, however, around 800 in­
cidents from the gathered data are found with investigation reports and
so, analysed. The description in all reports varies up to some extent as
per the difference in their reporting form and definitions (Appendix A).
Thus, a common data set is created for systematic evaluation of data.
The basic circumstances during the incidents are shown in Fig. 4. The
definitions of incidents and operations in Fig. 4 have their usual
meaning, still for more clarification reader can refer HSE taxonomy
[20].
The number of occurrences of incidents (initiating events) is counted
for its type (Fig. 4a). It can be seen that more than half of the incidents
are spill/releases of fluids. Following that, crane accidents, fire and
falling loads are the next prominent incidents. The mere occurrence
frequency is not enough to judge the risk associated with the occur­
rences and, therefore, the next chapter deals with the risk assessment
that accounts also for consequences of these hazards.
From Fig. 4(b), it is evident that 88% of hazardous incidents devel­
oped during the normal production operations of FPSOs. A few hazards
are seen during other operations such as drilling, well work-over and
offloading.
6.3. Application of chi-square independence test
To better understand various circumstances involved with incident
type, the present study uses chi-square test to check the dependence
amongst them. Chi-square test statistically signifies the difference be­
tween observed and expected frequency. The commonly used chi-square
tests in literature are goodness of fit, homogeneity test and indepen­
dence test. A goodness of fit test aims at finding suitable distribution
type for a given sample data set. The homogeneity test determines if a
random sample selected from each subgroup or population separately
and collect data on a single categorical variable is the same for each
subgroup or population. The independence test using chi-square is
applied when to test whether two variables have a statistically signifi­
cant relationship.
This section first utilizes a comprehensive report from HSE [20] that
contains a list of offshore installations operational for the period of 1980
to 2005 with description of incidents. A total of 3820 incident data
Fig. 4. Distribution of major hazardous incidents involved in FPSOs (a) and type of operations (b).
6
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
BSEE (2013–2017) WOAD (1970–2012)
0.94 0.49
2.00 2.00
1.09
44 25
94 102
51
categorized by their frequency is presented against the offshore instal­
lation in Appendix C. The objective here to justify the present study i.e.,
the FPSO exhibit different hazardous circumstance than other offshore
installations.
Next, chi-square tests are conducted on incidents occurred on FPSO
alone. Out of the 800 incident records collected, 508 incidents are
selected that meet the requirements for this analysis. In addition, the
authors’ previous works [15,79,] are utilized to develop various cir­
cumstances against incident types as subsequently presented in
Appendix D.
Various general hypotheses based on statistics of incidents in
Appendices C & D are presented in Table 2. The hypothesizes H0,2,4….
state that there is no significant relationship amongst the compared
variables whereas H1,3,5…. state that there is a significant relationship
amongst the compared variables.
The chi-square statistics (χ2) are calculated from the observed fre­
quency by comparing them with expected frequency. The critical values
of χ2 are calculated with 95% significance level. The null hypothesizes
(H0,2,4….) are accepted if χ2 less than critical χ2 and vice versa.
The validity of above-mentioned hypotheses is constituted that are
supposed to influence the type of incident. The results in terms of critical
and observed values of the chi-square statistics (χ2) are also presented in
Table 2. From the results of the first chi-square test, H0 hypothesis is
rejected and H1 is accepted. In this case it is statistically proven that
FPSO is different from other offshore installations with the distribution
of incident type. The type of incident occurring is highly specific to the
installation e.g., FPSOs and production semi-submersibles are involved
in higher number of spill/release whereas drilling semi-submersibles are
involved in crane accident. This fact also justifies the objective of pre­
sent study that accidents in FPSOs should be considered distinct and
explicitly.
All later hypotheses concern the type of incident occurring in FPSOs
and the influencing variables. As in the case of incident type and its
severity, H2 is rejected and H3 is accepted suggesting a significant
relationship between them. In other words, some incidents on FPSOs
tend to be more serious (e.g. crane accident) while others (e.g. falling
load) are less serious.
The operational mode of the FPSOs is a vital feature of FPSOs which
is tested next. H4 is rejected and H5 is accepted as there is a significant
U. Bhardwaj et al. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904

Table 2
Chi-square hypotheses established in this study and test results.
Hypothesis
H0* There is no significant relationship
between incident type and type of
offshore installation
H1* There is a significant relationship
between incident type and type of
offshore installation
H2 There is no significant relationship
between incident type and its severity
H3 There is a significant relationship
between incident type and its severity
H4 There is no significant relationship
between incident type and FPSO
operational mode
H5 There is a significant relationship
between incident type and FPSO
operational mode
H6 There is no significant relationship
between incident type and FPSO topside
activity
H7 There is a significant relationship
between incident type and FPSO topside
activity
H8 There is no significant relationship
between incident type and on-board
fatality
H9 There is a significant relationship
between incident type and on-board
fatality
H10 There is no significant relationship
between incident type and error type
H11 There is a significant relationship
between incident type and error type
H12 There is no significant relationship
between incident type and average age
of FPSO
H13 There is a significant relationship
between incident type and average age
of FPSO
(* Hypothesizes checked against data in Appendix C, rest from Appendix D).
with average age of the FPSOs in service. For example, the frequency of
crane accidents increases more than two times for an average age > 5
Critical χ2 Result years. The reason could be that old systems and equipment offer more
χ2 grounds for hazardous events (incidents).
212.3 1892.5 Rejected
6.4. Circumstances of incidents pertaining to fire/explosion
Accepted
Release, fire and explosion incidents are the three types of incidents
present in the database that have either escalated or have potential to
47.4 184.1 Rejected
result into fire and explosion accidents. These three incident types from
Accepted the database are analysed for their circumstances. The results of this
analysis are shown in Fig. 5 as percentage of severity (a) onboard ac­
73.3 121.9 Rejected tivity (b) and basic causes (c) of incidents pertaining to fire and explo­
sion. Though only 2% of incidents are escalated to severe accidents, yet
Accepted the major concern is that 70% of them are significant incidents. A total
of 60% of incidents are reported during normal operations followed by
18% found in routine inspections. This study attempts to identify the
73.3 57.8 Accepted basic causes behind such incidents, however due to limited description
of incidents in the source data, 36% of the causes remain unknown. It
Rejected has been evidenced that operational errors have been the prominent
reason for the occurrence of incidents followed by component failures.
Obviously, as similar to previous findings, the 92% of incidents occurred
11.1 24.1 Rejected
during normal operations, followed by 3% incidents occurred during
drilling and well work-over each.
Accepted Further, the database is scrutinized for modules/system and equip­
ment involved in the incidents pertaining to fire and explosion. The
results of this analysis are presented in Fig. 6 (a) and (b) for the involved
60.5 55.6 Accepted
module/system and equipment, respectively. For the formal definition
Rejected of the terms, the authors’ previous work [79] can be referred. The
module and equipment handling gas with high pressure are more prone
19.7 31.5 Rejected to such incidents. Power generation and bulk storage systems are the
next sensitive areas. In terms of equipment, tank, pump, engine and
Accepted flowlines are susceptible to higher risk of fire/explosion. The detailed
statistics about the causal factors of every incident are not presented
here, although the information is used in the later section to evaluate
risk and compute prior probabilities.

relationship between type of incident and FPSO operational mode.
Although, the highest incidents are reported during production mode,
still other modes may increase risk of other incidents such as offloading
influences the occurring probability of contact incidents.
Topside activities are conducted by people on-board such as
commissioning, watch keeping and maintenance on FPSOs [79]. How­
ever, there is no significant relation found between the type of activity
and the type of incident (as hypothesis H6 is accepted and H7 is rejected).
The type of incident shows random distribution on topside activities
with no clear dependence.
Regarding the chi-square test results between incident type and fa­
tality, the H8 hypothesis is rejected and H9 is accepted. The number of
fatalities depends on type of incident, in particular crane accidents
involve the highest number of fatalities. From the study regarding the
causes of spill or releases and the analysis of the reports, some statistics
are prepared (see Appendix C) for incident types and causal errors. From
the chi-square test results it is seen that incidents are randomly
distributed over types of error. In this case it can be inferred that an
incident does not depend on any specific error.
The database analysed does not contain the age of the FPSOs in the
incident description. However, it was possible to calculate the average
age of operational FPSOs per year. For the total service time, the average
age is categorized in two sets: 1) when the average service time is more
than 5 years (after first oil and gas production); 2) when the average
service time is less than 5 years, and the frequency of incident type is
recorded. The results from chi-square test reveal that H12 is rejected
whereas H13 is accepted. So, the type of incidents has significant relation
7. Accident analysis with risk matrix
The incident statistics are described in the previous section, which
represent mostly the initiating events. The accidents have higher con­
sequences or outcomes than such incidents. From the gathered data,
investigation reports of around 100 accidents have been utilized for
basic risk assessment.
This section adopts a risk matrix to screen and characterize accident
scenarios observed in the database and available in public domain (a
sample is shown in Appendix B). This is a qualitative approach adopted
here to rank and highlight major accidents. The risk is calculated using
Eq. (7), given below:
Risk = Probability of failure (PoF) × Severity (7)
The risk matrix is adopted from DNVGL [87] and customized to suit
FPSO accidents as shown in Table 3, which also illustrates the criteria for
severity and PoF. The degree of severity is assigned with indices from A
to E, where A signifies minimum level and E implies the highest level of
severity. Severity is perceived in three consequence categories namely
safety, environment and cost. The rationale behind using such a tax­
onomy is to bring all possible consequences in one line, resulting from
different accident scenarios. The PoF ranges from 1 to 5 in order of
increasing failure probability or occurrence of such a scenario.
The risk categories and acceptance criteria are provided in Table 4.
The matrix here can be used to calculate the risk of each scenario under
consideration. The criteria shown in Table 4 are used to rank accident
scenarios.
The database is analysed thoroughly to obtain generic accident

7
U. Bhardwaj et al. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904

Fig. 5. Severity (a) Onboard activity (b) and basic causes (c) of incidents pertaining to Fire and explosion.

Fig. 6. FPSOs’ module or system (a) and equipment (b) involved with the incidents pertaining to fire and explosion.

Table 3
Risk matrix adopted from DNVGL-RP-0002, 2014 [87].
Severity Consequence categories Increasing probability
Safety Environment Cost 1 2 3 4 5
(million Failure is Never heard An accident has Has been Occurs
Euro) not of in the occurred in the experienced by several
expected industry industry most operators times per
year
< 105 105 - 104 104 – 103 103 – 102 102 – 101

Increasing E Multiple Massive effect, Large > 10 M H VH VH VH

consequences fatalities damage area >100
BBL
D Single fatalities Major effect, 1 - 10 L M H VH VH
or permanent Significant spill
disability response <100BBL
C Major injury, Localized effect, Soil 0.1 - 1 VL L M H VH
long term response < 50 BBL
absence
B Slight injury, a Minor effect, Non- 0.01 - 0.1 VL VL L M H
few lost work compliance < 5 BBL
days
A No or superficial Slightly effect on the < 0.01 VL VL VL L M
injuries environment < 1
BBL

scenarios based on a balanced consideration of hazard identification and

Table 4
historical accidents. The above-mentioned scheme is employed to
Risk categories and acceptance criteria.
calculate risk as per section for the different accidental scenarios.
Colour Risk Interpretation Appendix B shows some sample risk calculations for recent major acci­
code
dents. The present study, however, calculates risk for several accidents
VH Very high Unacceptable risk - Immediate action to be taken that are not included here due to space limitations. The risk assessment
H High Unacceptable risk - Action to be taken resulted in the ranking of major accidents in FPSOs as follows: Fire and
M Medium Acceptable risk - Action to reduce the risk may be
evaluated
Explosion, occupational accidents, crane accidents, loss of position or
L Low Acceptable risk - Action to ensure the risk remains low stability, collision, machine failure, helicopter accident, grounding,
VL Very low Acceptable risk - Action to ensure the risk remains very blowout, other. Fire and Explosion accidents are typically registered in
low the same category as they have almost the same causal framework.

8
U. Bhardwaj et al.
8. Risk influencing factors – causal framework
The analysis of the causes of accidents is an important element of the
risk management process. This step is synonymous to the hazard iden­
tification in the risk assessment framework. It aims to generate the
hieratical structure of various risk influencing factors causing an acci­
dental scenario in FPSO. From the data of accidents in the last section, a
detailed analysis has been carried out to relate the types of accidents (in
particular Fire and Explosion), the intermediate and basic causes and
frequency of occurrence of basic events. The extensive study of accident
data when compared with technical reports and papers indicated that
this analysis is not sufficient to develop a causal framework and for basic
probability characterisation. It is emphasized that incident or near-miss
data are also important to gain a better understanding of the underlying
causes of accidents [49]. For this purpose, this analysis digs as far as
possible into the available investigation reports (around 800 incident
descriptions) to provide a statistical representation of causal factors.
A common framework for incorporating these data is established. A
database structure has been developed by type of incident, operation
involved, outcome of the incident and the causal factors in terms of
immediate, intermediate and basic causes. This data structure is used in
the next section to model fire and explosion accident scenarios in FPSOs.
It should be noted that the basic causes may or may not be a root
cause. The basic cause is the last identified factor in the investigation
reports, however this cause may have some contributory factors known
as the root cause. For simplicity, this study assumes the last identified
cause as the basic cause. The investigation reports are reviewed, and the
contributory factors are categorized and prioritized. It is important to
note that the most important and the most likely factors found in the
literature are incorporated. This makes the study distinct from other
studies on similar accidents on other installations. For example, fires in
convectional ships are far different from those in FPSOs as there may be
more agents as per the complex systems present in FPSOs.
9. Evidence-based BN model
9.1. Construction of BN model for fire/explosion
After understanding the accidents and incidents causation (Section
8), a directed acyclic graph (DAG) is structured based on the evidential
information provided. The BN model is developed using the structure
and relationship amongst the contributory parameters. The GeNIe [62,
63] software from the decision systems laboratory of the University of
Fig. 7. BN model for fire and explosion scenarios in FPSOs.
9
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
Pittsburgh is utilized here to develop the BN model.
Fig 7 shows the BN model of fire and explosion scenarios in FPSOs.
The basic causes can be numerous, however, the present model only
incorporates the ones that are observed in accident reports and the ones
that are the most likely to occur by expert opinion. For finer dis­
cretization of intermediate and basic causes, more data and evidences
are required. However, a greater number of variables imply more
complex and larger conditional probabilities that need to be obtained.
The taxonomy for immediate, intermediate and basic causes is kept
simple, and is defined based mainly on HSE reports and other references
[73,88,89]. The use of typical taxonomy may provide a different
perspective to the modelling and analysis, such as the HFACS taxonomy
to elaborate more on the human factor aspects involved in the accident
scenario [90]. However, the present study focuses on the basic causes
and their importance in an accident scenario based on the observed data.
In a later section, causal factor analysis is also conducted.
9.2. Prior probabilities for model input variables
After formulating the qualitative model, the next step is to quantify
the model with states and probabilities. Each node of the BN has two
states: “T”- True, positive and “F” – False, negative states to indicate a
cause of a particular variable. For example, if the basic cause “corrosion”
has a probability of occurrence of 9 × 10− 5, the node for corrosion de­
picts T = 9 × 10− 5 and the non-occurrence probability is F = 1 – 9 ×
10− 5.
In this paper, the prior probabilities are calculated from the assess­
ment of the combined database, since the number of accidents is limited,
and it is well-known that incidents also characterize the potential
threats. In total 792 accidents and incidents with a detailed description
are studied. The cases where an event is leading or may lead to a
particular accident are segregated. For example, 438 cases that repre­
sent potential to lead to fire and explosion are selected, out of which,
303 cases were identified with reasonable evidence for the causes. Some
of the causes remain unidentified due to lack of reporting quality and
content. The basic causes are further classified, and their occurrence
frequency is calculated. The population data is characterized by total
unit-years defined as number of FPSO units active for one year. For
example, the probability of failure due to corrosion per unit-year is
calculated as
U. Bhardwaj et al.
Number of occurrences (6)
P(Corrosion) =
Total numb. of ident. cases(303).Total unit years (220)
= 9 × 10− 5 per unit − years
Table 7 tabulates the prior probabilities calculated as per the above
method. Some basic causes do not occur in the databases, however,
deemed as potential causes. Such cases are identified as “Cause*” and
assigned a minimum probability value.
9.3. Uncertainty in predicting the probability of fire/explosion
The final probability of an accident depends mainly on the accident
modelling technique and inputs at various constituent nodes. First, the
BN model is inferred as a simple fault tree using OR gates at all the
conditional probability tables for intermediate nodes. Thus, the proba­
bility of fire and explosion is calculated using this conventional
approach.
Next, the BN model is constructed using Noisy-OR gates at the in­
termediate nodes. The primary implication in such models is the
calculation of CPT. Based on expert opinions and the data analysed (in
above sections), the CPT of all child (intermediate) nodes are assigned
with non-causation probability. For the demonstration purpose a part of
the BN model “Design /fabrication failure” node is considered here.
Table 5 presents the non-causation probability for the parent nodes:
Substandard material, Improper installation and Wrong dimension.
Next, the CPT are computed as shown in Table 6 for the intermediate
node - design/fabrication failure. The sum of all the values in column 6
of the table represents the net probability of design/fabrication failure.
If the dependence amongst failure causes is to be modelled, a study with
advanced CPT computation can be referred [23].
Further, this BN model is advanced (BN-Un) with the application of
Leaky Noisy-gates at the intermediate nodes to account for the uncer­
tainty in the incident data analysed. It is evident that some of the cases
had limited description that could be used to identify the causal group
but not the basic causes. These cases are not incorporated in earlier
modelling; however, their occurrence can be used as leak probability at
the intermediate nodes (causal group). Moreover, the leak probabilities
are assigned to the case that only describes the occurrence of final in­
cidents such as the release and ignition. For example, the Design and
Fabrication (D/F) failure is indicated as the cause of release in 30 cases
without further specifying the basic cause, thus its leak probability is
calculated as:
Number of identified cases (30)
PLeaky (D/F) =
N. of cases relevant to accident(438).Total unit years (220)
= 6.23 × 10− 4 per unit − years
Similarly, leak probabilities are assigned to the nodes mechanical
failure, operational failure, releases and ignition.
The essence of this study is to model a scenario that is the most
pragmatic, using realistic cases even with limited data, however, the
authors do not claim for absolute quantitative accuracy. The model can
be updated when more data are available and can be observed as a
qualitative and quantitative model.
The probabilities of the final event are calculated from the three
models as; 2.76 × 10− 6 by Fault tree, 1.91 × 10− 6 by BN and 4.52 ×
Table 5
Safe and failure probabilities of basic causes of design/fabrication failure.
Causal group Probability of design/fabrication failure
Basic causes Causation Non-causation Probability of basic cause
Substandard material 0.75 0.25 p1
Improper installation 0.9 0.1 p2
Wrong dimension 0.8 0.2 p3
The probabilities p1, p2 and p3 are given against the basic causes in Table 7.
10
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
10− 6 per unit-years by BN-Un. Some obvious differences are evident by
the three models as the highest probability is computed with the model
BN-Un while lowest by BN. From the analysis of the failure probabilities
from these models, it can be deduced that the probability of failure
calculated from the BN model and BN-Un model can be treated as lower
and upper bounds.
9.4. Sensitivity analysis
As discussed at the introduction and methodology sections, the
sensitivity analysis is performed here to identify the most critical basic
events (causes) in the fire and explosion scenario. Fig. 8 presents the
model when the final event “Fire and Explosion” is set to True. The basic
causes now present the posterior probabilities given the occurrence of
“Fire and Explosion”. These values are used to calculate the sensitivity
factors (SF) of the variables as per Eqs. (5) & (6). The results of sensi­
tivity analysis are presented in Table 7 and illustrated in Fig. 9. As
already discussed in the previous section, two BN models are used here
and therefore two sets of SF are calculated.
The causes with the highest importance in fire and explosion sce­
narios are all the ones responsible for the ignition, i.e., lightening, HE-
introduced spark, electric spark or hot surface. In the causes for release,
the human error, like incorrect fitting, is the most important one fol­
lowed by welding defect. Remaining most of the causes have a SYi be­
tween 0.05 and 0.1. Commenting on human errors as a whole, they
represent 21.5% share of total sensitivity. This implies that different
types of human errors at the front end increase the chance of accident. It
is important to note that human factors’ involvement may be even more
relevant and so is analysed later.
The BN model with uncertain data results in slightly different
(mostly lower) values of SF for the basic causes, as seen in Fig. 9. Some
causes like wrong dimension, excess mechanical loads and collision have
the same SF as that calculated earlier. According to BN-Un model, faulty
electric equipment followed by circuit failure and hot surface are the
most important causes.
Comparing the two immediate causes “release” and “ignition”, the
importance of preventing ignitions is 62% while that for releases is 38%
(Fig. 10). This signifies that preventive barriers for ignition are more
important compared to the release ones.
The information provided in this section may be useful for decision-
makers to prioritize their resources. The proposed BN model framework
for risk analysis can be customized to any particular scenario. For
example, for FPSOs working under specific conditions (extreme
weather, region with ice bergs) or with less operating equipment, a new
set of relevant variables can be added to the BN model.
9.5. Causal factors analysis
During the operation of FPSOs in a different region or by a different
operator/contractor, the causal factors may change, influencing the
probability of basic causes and, consequently, the probability of Fire/
Explosion. As a matter of fact, most of the reasons for the fire accidents
are their relationship with the human (HF), organizational (OF) and
environmental (EF) factors [52]. This section discusses the effect of
these three categories of causal factors.
Human errors (HE incorrect fitting, left open, not follow procedures)
are influenced by the human factors. It is obvious that events such as
collisions, loss of station keeping or lightening are influenced by envi­
ronmental factors. The optimum temperature and pressure of operation
are maintained with respect to organizational policy. It is to be noted
that faulty electric equipment are mostly transformers. From the
investigation reports, it is hinted that predominantly the failures are
caused due to lack of preventive maintenance and hence they are
influenced by OF. To incorporate their effect in the BN model, evidences
are introduced in the relevant nodes and the variation on the fire and
explosion probability is assessed. For the sake of simplicity, in the
U. Bhardwaj et al. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904

Table 6
Conditional probability of design/fabrication for Noisy-OR gate.
Basic causes Probability of design/fabrication failure
Substandard material Improper installation Wrong dimension Causation Non causation Conditional probability at different states

T T T 0.995 0.005 = 0.25 × 0.2 × 0.1 = 0.995 × (p1) × (p2) × (p3)

T T
T F
T F
F T
F T
F F
F F
F 0.975
T 0.95
F 0.75
T 0.98
F 0.9
T 0.8
F 0
0.025 = 0.25 × 0.1 = 0.975 × (p1) × (p2) × (1-p3)
0.05 = 0.25 × 0.2 = 0.95 × (p1) × (1-p2) × (p3)
0.25 = 0.75 × (p1) × (1- p2) × (1- p3)
0.02 = 0.1 × 0.2 = 0.98 × (1- p1) × (p2) × (p3)
0.2 = 0.9 × (1- p1) × (p2) × (1- p3)
0.1 = 0.8 × (1-p1) × (1- p2) × (p3)
1 = 0 × (1- p1) × (1- p2) × (1- p3)

Fig. 8. BN when evidence is set to Fire and explosion scenario.

present scheme of analysis, only the first BN model, without leaky

Table 7
probabilities, is used.
The prior probabilities and sensitivity factors for the basic causes.
Through the comparison of sensitivity analysis for different sce­
basic causes Prior probability SYi – BN SYi – BN-Un narios, the relative importance of each causal factor is evaluated and
Ageing* 6.00e-05 0.097 0.069 presented in Fig. 11. Unsurprisingly, HF accounts for almost half (48%)
Erosion 2.25E-04 0.064 0.055 of the importance followed by OF and EF.
Corrosion 9.00E-05 0.097 0.093
Wear 9.00E-05 0.064 0.046 10. Discussion
Substandard material 9.00E-05 0.064 0.046
Improper installation* 6.00E-05 0.097 0.069
Wrong dimension* 6.00E-05 0.048 0.069 Efficient measures to prevent and mitigate accidents in the offshore
Welding defect 3.00E-04 0.087 0.083 sector require comprehensive knowledge on the accident-related phe­
Excess vibration 1.05E-04 0.110 0.079 nomena, as well as the adequate risk analysis methodology. Significant
HE- Incorrect fitting 5.40E-04 0.113 0.108
research work has been conducted on offshore fire risk analysis and
HE-left open 4.95E-04 0.094 0.084
Fatigue 5.25E-04 0.061 0.055 accident modelling. However, the mainstream of offshore fire risk ana­
Excess mechanical loads 4.50E-05 0.064 0.093 lyses is neutral to installation types and the scope is limited to conse­
High pressure 4.80E-04 0.078 0.069 quence, frequency or effect analysis. The primary motivation of the
High temperature 1.65E-04 0.070 0.050 present study is to develop a FPSO specific risk assessment integrated
Loss of station keeping 1.50E-05 0.077 0.055
Collision 4.50E-05 0.064 0.093
approach.
Dropped object 1.50E-05 0.058 0.041 The objective of the present study is to assess major accident sce­
Lack of procedures* 6.00E-05 0.097 0.069 narios in FPSOs with accident and incident data. The accident scenario
HE - not follow procedure 1.95E-04 0.089 0.085 for fire and explosion is modelled and the basic causes are prioritized
HE-introduced arc 1.35E-04 0.258 0.279
using a Bayesian Network probabilistic framework. The model is
HE-welding spark 1.20E-04 0.339 0.348
Hot surface 9.00E-05 0.322 0.371 generic, simplified and the states of nodes are static. A rigorous study
Exhaust gas 1.05E-04 0.304 0.318 and relevant data are required to model the complex operational sce­
Friction 6.00E-05 0.290 0.279 narios of FPSOs and to assess the basic causes of fire and explosion ac­
Faulty electric equip 1.35E-04 0.366 0.402 cidents. A preliminary attempt to address this issue is made in this study.
Circuit failure 2.25E-04 0.348 0.371
Lightening 1.50E-05 0.387 0.279
However, the present study stands on some key assumptions and various
issues that need to be sorted out as discussed below.
HE- Human Error, * cases with assumed values. The BN model is developed to calculate the probability of fire and
explosion in one year of operation. The prior probabilities are calculated

11
U. Bhardwaj et al.
Fig. 9. Global sensitivity measure (SY i ) of basic causes for fire and explosion scenarios (HE- Human Error).
Fig. 10. Share of the importance of ignition release preventive barriers.
Fig. 11. Relative importance of causal factors.
from the evaluation of accident and incident databases. These proba­
bilities may not be accurate due to the inherent uncertainties involved,
still the model is valuable for preliminary analyses. The uncertainties
may also remain due to the quality of information obtained from the
databases. The BN model with canonical nodes has been used to
accommodate conditional probabilities and uncertainties to some
extent.
Raw data available in the public domain have been analysed.
12
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904
Besides, the authors have analysed other accident reports and data to
provide the basis for the model. So, the results and observations made
are directly related and limited by the source materials used. The depth
of this study is also conditioned upon the findings of the investigation as
not all incident reports were detailed enough to describe all dimensions
of the scenario.
Another issue with the reports is their casual approach of reporting
an incident. In addition, the content varies in the databases for similar
incidents. It has been observed that they require a coherent taxonomy to
record each incident, in which the present reporting forms have limited
scope.
Some basic causes in this study can be further broken down into
additional variables or factors, such as corrosion can be influenced by
the environment, pipe material, fluid properties. Similarly, any human
error may be composed of various factors like skill, knowledge. The
present model can be extended further to better detail these factors if the
necessary data are available. Conversely, unavailability of data would
make the model more hypothetical.
The study also assumes that all child nodes have some dependence on
parent nodes primarily from expert opinion. This is because the quality
of data was not sufficient to derive such dependencies adequately. The
expert opinion when assigning the dependence levels has a substantial
impact on the results.
Then, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the most signif­
icant variables (basic causes) on fire and explosion accidents. The
sensitivity analysis is also important to identify measures for preventing
and mitigating the impact of an accident. Some basic causes show low
sensitivity factors, yet the minimum value to make them significant is a
subjective case and thus depends on decision-makers.
The direct causes are exposed by the current methodology based on
the qualitative information provided by the reporting data. Moreover,
human, organizational and environmental factors are evaluated.
Another prominent causal factors, such as technical factors that in­
fluences mechanical failures and design fabrication errors are not
incorporated. The authors believe that technical factors are relatively
less important than other factors observed in the accident scenarios.
However, further studies incorporating technical factors are necessary
to assess their influence on the accident scenarios.
U. Bhardwaj et al. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904

11. Conclusions
This study proposes an integrated approach for risk assessment and
probabilistic modelling of fire and explosion scenarios in FPSOs. First,
FPSO incident data is taken from major open source databases like HSE,
BSEE and NOPSEMA. It is found that there are around 0.5 serious ac­
cidents, at least 3 incidents and 0.5 significant injuries per year per FPSO
unit. Moreover, accident databases, reports and specialised literature are
analysed to characterize accidents and incidents specific to FPSOs. A
total of 800 FPSO specific incident descriptions are evaluated, catego­
rized and coded. More than half of the incidents are spills or release of
fluids, followed by crane accidents, fire and falling loads. Around 88% of
these incidents developed during the normal production operational
mode of the FPSOs.
The chi-square method is applied to test hypotheses regarding inci­
dent types and potential influencing variables. Some significant re­
lationships for incident type is found with incident severity, number of
on-board fatality, FPSO operational mode and average age. However,
the type of topside activity and error do not influence a particular
incident.
About 100 cases of accidents are characterized and categorized to
develop different risk scenarios. The risk matrix is constructed for major
accident scenario and accidents are consequently screened. Fire and
explosion is found to be a major threat for FPSO.
The literature is further assessed and incidental data combined with
accidental data are utilized to construct the causal network. Prior
probabilities are estimated based on their occurrence in the databases.
Later, this study creates a fire and explosion model using Bayesian
Network in FPSO based on evidence obtained from accident databases.
Evidence-based modelling allows more realistic scenario whereas, the
use of BN allows flexibility to model interdependencies amongst causal
factors and provides space for expert elicitation. The methodology
presents a way to calculate the probabilities of major accidents.
Probability of fire and explosion is computed from the model, it is
observed that Leaky Noise OR gate estimates lower bound of the prob­
ability. Sensitivity analysis is performed to highlight the most significant
basic causes for fire and explosion. Ignition prevention is found as more
important than release prevention.
Finally, a causal factor analysis using human, organizational and
environmental factors is conducted. Human factors have higher
importance (around half), followed by organizational and environ­
mental factors.
The accident (Bayes) network model developed in this study, from a
sequence of causal events play an important role in the accident for­
mation. The model can be further customized to incorporate many
features such as relative influence of causes on failure through CPT,
prioritizing one error above any other errors etc. The results of this study
may be useful for FPSO operators and decision-makers to allocate re­
sources for accident prevention. This study will be further extended to
assess various uncertainties and model other major accidents.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was performed within the project RESET (REliability and
Safety Engineering and Technology for large maritime engineering
systems), which is partially financed by the European Union Horizon
2020 research and innovation program, under the Marie Skodowska-
Curie grant agreement No. 73088 RESET. This work contributes to the
Strategic Research Plan of the Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean
Engineering (CENTEC), which is financed by the Portuguese Foundation
for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia -
FCT) under contract UIDB/UIDP/00134/2020.

Appendix. An Overview of definition of basic terms in databases

Database Definition of accident and incidents

NOPSEMA Accidents - Casualty events, serious injury, LTA (1–3 days), LTA > 3 days (LTA-Lost Time Accident,)
Dangerous occurrences (potential accidents) - Fire/Explosion, collision, uncontrolled hydrocarbon leaks, well kicks, dropped objects, events with emergency action
required, failure of safety critical equipment, pipe failure etc.
Recordable environmental incidents - types of spills and releases, operational failures
BSEE Accidents - Casualty events, serious injury, LTA (1–3 days), LTA > 3 days, RW/JT (1–3 days), RW/JT>3 days, pollution, fire, explosion, loss of well control, collision,
structural damage, crane accidents, other lifting equipment, damaged/disabled system
Incidents - >25 K, H2S release, required muster, shutdown from gas release, other (RW/JT - Restricted Work/Job Transfer)
HSE/ Accident Hazardous situation causing fatalities and severe injuries Anchor failure, blowout, capsize, collision, contact, crane accident, explosion, fire,
WOAD Incident Hazardous situation not developed into an accidental situation. falling load, foundering, grounding, helicopter accident, leakage, spill release, list,
low degree of damage, but repairs/replacements are required machine failure, off position, structural damage, towing accident, well problem, other

Appendix B. (Risk assessment of some recent accidents) [69,40,70-72]

FPSO Year Country Initiating event Final event Consequence Basic Causes Accident Severity PoF Risk

Petrobras- P- 2017 Brazil Helicopter Rough 4 injured Human, Environment Helicopter C 3 M

37 Incident landing and accident
crashed
SeaRose 2017 Newfoundland Collision with Structural Structural Inadequate safety Collision C 4 H
iceberg damage precautions
Petrojarl 2016 North Sea UK Anchor failure Loss in – Extreme weather and lost Loss of A 3 VL
Banff position tension position/
/stability stability
Petrojarl 2015 Norway Fire Fire – Electric induced fire in a Fire C 4 H
Knarr heating, ventilation and air
conditioning unit.
2015 Norway. list Door ripped off Extreme weather A 3 VL
(continued on next page)

13
U. Bhardwaj et al. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 215 (2021) 107904

(continued )
FPSO Year Country Initiating event Final event Consequence Basic Causes Accident Severity PoF Risk

Petrojarl Loss in Loss of

Knarr position position/
stability
Cidade de 2015 Brazil Gas leak Explosion 9 killed 26 Equip failure, wrong Explosion E 4 VH
São Mateus missing installation, operational
errors
Anasuria 2015 North Sea UK Unknown Unknown 1 Fatality (age Unknown Other D 2 M
61)
Gryphon A 2011 North Sea UK Anchor failure Loss in 2 injured Manufacturing defect on a Loss of B 4 H
(Chain Break) position chain link, Very heavy position/
/stability weather stability
Ngujima-Yin 2009 Australia Fire Explosion Breakdown of Poor safety culture (Deluge Explosion B 5 H
gas compressor valves foam system GRE
piping failed)

Appendix C. Distribution of incidents involved in offshore installations [20]

Offshore installation Incident type

AN BL CL CN CR EX FA FI GR HE LE LG LI MA OT PO ST TO WP

Accommodation jackup 2 4 6 1 2 2
Accommodation semi-submersible 24 6 24 1 9 10 3 1 1 2 8 5
Drillship 5 1 23 3 2 1 2 2 4
FPSO 14 0 0 15 63 2 20 44 0 1 0 321 0 1 20 0 6 0 1
Drilling jackup 8 6 72 379 4 97 50 1 1 2 92 9 1 24 8 164
Production jackup 9 7 1 9 4
Production semi-submersible 8 7 40 3 17 16 133 5 3 1
Drilling semi-submersible 182 2 10 106 860 11 241 84 6 11 140 3 3 23 3 30 19 136
Tension-leg platform 2 58 9 13 1 19 1 1 3

(AN- Anchor failure, BL – Blowout, CL – Collision, CN – Contact, CR - Crane accident, EX – Explosion, FA - Falling load, FI – Fire, GR Grounding, HE
Helicopter accident, LE Leakage, LG Spill/release, LI – List, MA - Machinery failure, OT –Other, PO - Off position, ST -Structural damage, TO -Towing
accident, WP - Well problem)

Appendix D. Distribution of incidents involved in FPSO with circumstances [15,20,79]

Incident type
AN CN CR EX FA FI HE LG MA OT ST WP

Severity of incident Accident 1 7 1 1 6 3 0

Incident 12 5 40 1 10 30 0 225 1 12 3 1
Near-Miss 2 7 7 4 2 1 2
Insignificant 2 9 6 11 90 6
Operational mode Development drilling 1 2
Drilling 2 1 1 1 1 9
Off-loading 1 3 1 2 1
Production 10 12 57 1 18 40 1 297 1 17 5
Well workover 1 1 9 1 1
Other 1 2 1 2 2 1 1
Topside activity Normal Operation 6 5 20 1 7 15 1 202 1 6 3 1
Routine Inspection 2 3 16 1 4 11 56 4 1
Commissioning 1 2 12 5 7 26 3 1
Maintenance 3 3 9 2 6 24 4
Watch keeping 2 2 6 2 5 13 3 1
Number of fatality 1 1 21 4 1 4
2 1 2
Error type Design Error 1 2 1 1 1 4 1 1
Component failure 2 2 7 4 6 87 5 1
Operational errors 7 6 26 1 9 18 1 103 1 8 3 1
Procedural errors 0 2 7 2 5 9 1
Unknown 4 3 22 1 4 14 118 5 1
FPSO average age < 5 years 5 6 17 0 9 19 0 170 1 4 0 0
> 5 years 9 9 46 2 11 25 1 151 0 16 6 1

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