All industrial and non industrial operations benefit from a holistic approach to safety that supports a secure process control network to the perimeter of the spaces and of the plants to protect people, assets and profitability. A layered safety strategy encompasses process and system technology—and the people who interact with that technology—to achieve safety objectives.
A layered safety strategy unifies all plant protection layers (i.e., basic control, prevention and mitigation as outlined in IEC 61511 standard) required for achieving optimum functional safety. Plus, it provides the required functional safety with a high SIL. This includes superior visualization and logging facilities enabling optimal operator response and accurate evaluations. By integrating basic control, prevention and mitigation components, overall project costs and ongoing maintenance expenses can be vastly reduced.
A truly integrated safety system delivers:
- Integrated operational interface
- Integrated peer control
- Integrated diagnostics
- Integrated postmortem analysis
- Integrated fire and gas system
- Integrated power supplies
- Integrated modifications
- Integrated simulation and optimization
Integrated control and safety systems (ICSS) provide multiple benefits to process plants. For instance, they helps operators to minimize intervention and shutdowns and recover more easily from process upsets.
Seamless integration with the ESD and DCS via a common network protocol provides a safe landing in case of emergencies and eliminates the need for additional equipment or engineering.
Integration of fire detection & security systems for off-sites and utilities with the plant automation infrastructure further improves operator efficiency through single-window access for alarm visualization, diagnostics, and events/historians.
When an abnormal situation occurs, alarm management, early event detection, and abnormal situation management (ASM)-designed displays ensure operators have the information available in the context they need it. This enables faster reaction to hazardous situations, thereby avoiding safety incidents.
Emergency shutdown systems and automated procedures can move a plant to a safe state in the event an incident escalates beyond the inner sphere of protection. Should an incident occur, fire and gas detection solutions coupled with rapid location of individuals and a carefully designed emergency response procedure will help contain the impact.