Assessment of resilience engineering factors in high-risk environments by fuzzy cognitive maps: A petrochemical plant

It is known that in high-risk environments such as petrochemical plants having a safe environment is very crucial for the system to continue working. In fact, the consequences of unexpected events such as gas leakage, explosion in these systems are almost unbearable. Through dealing with the safety in these systems, several approaches have been proposed. Resilience engineering (RE) is one of these approaches that looks proactive to the subject and represents an alternative to the conventional safety management. This approach seeks ways to improve the ability at all levels of organizations to create processes that are robust and flexible. The main objective of this study is to assess the factors affecting the resilient level of a petrochemical plant and being able to get expanded to other industries. It is achieved through a fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) method that considers interactions between factors due to their final calculated weights. The results of FCMs are combined with a set of questionnaire results to enhance the accuracy of final weights. The primary data of this study are obtained from the questionnaire answered by specialists, engineers and top-level managers who work in a petrochemical plant. The results show that the most important factors among all RE factors are awareness, preparedness and flexibility. In addition, redundancy is the factor with the lowest influence on RE. This is the first study for assessment of RE in uncertain and high risk environments such as petrochemical plants by FCM. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.