Safety-critical systems for unmanned facilities

Performance management of safety instrumented systems (SIS, automatic control systems to ensure safe condition of process systems in accidental situations) is a vital part of the major accident risk management for oil and gas processing facilities. The requirements to performance management are provided in national regulations and governing standards for SIS, such as IEC 61508 and IEC 61511, and cover the need for regular testing and inspection, online diagnostics, failure registration and analysis, and implementation of corrective measures upon performance deviations. Many of these tasks are resource demanding, carried out manually, and dependent on local presence of humans at the facilities. For unmanned oil and gas facilities offshore, it is necessary to move to a higher level of automation and autonomy in performance management. This includes the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the ability of the SIS to respond to demands under various operating conditions, based on real-time data and event data from multiple monitoring systems.