Safety Communication Systems

The safety system must have procedures for two-way communication between managers and employees. As will be discussed, committees are one form of a structured communication system. A systan whereby risks in the workplace can be reported is also vital. This may have to be an anonymous system, as even though a culture may be in transition, the fear factor may still exist for many years. 

There must be a quick, easy, and effective way for employees to communicate safety concerns, high-risk conditions and acts, and high potential near-miss incidents to the line management without them being worried about repercussions. 

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The development of computer capabiUties in hardware and software, related instmmentation and control, and telecommunication technology represent an opportunity for improvement in safety (see COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY). Plant operators can be provided with a variety of user-friendly diagnostic aids to assist in plant operations and incipient failure detection. Communications can be more rapid and dependable. The safety control systems can be made even more rehable and maintenance-free. Moreover, passive safety features to provide emergency cooling for both the reactor system and the containment building are being developed. 

The Task Force s mission is to design a state-of-the-art process safety management system that will support all of Company X s varied business operations, and to install it at a pilot site to be determined. The team will maintain ongoing communication with Division C s Facility Managers Council, which has accepted responsibility for focusing on the division s process safety management systems. 

Management policies are the source of many of the preconditions that give rise to systems failures. For example, if no explicit policy exists or if resources are not made available for safety critical areas such as procedures design, the effective presentation of process information, or for ensuring that effective communication systems exist, then human error leading to an accident is, at some stage, inevitable. Such policy failures can be regarded as another form of latent human error, and will be discussed in more detail in Section 2.7. 

Toxic operations must be supported by a good communications system. In laboratories where communications are inadequate, workers will naturally use "runners" for communication needs. This practice results in avoidable traffic in and out of toxic areas which increases the opportunities for contamination to spread. In emergencies, a phone or intercom can help ensure that assistance is tailored to the actual need. An "all purpose" response to an alarm will normally be less rapid at a time when speed may be of the essence. Video cameras trained on critical operations add a measure of safety, but annoy the workers who may feel that the purpose of the system is to "spy" on them. As a minimum, the laboratory doors should have windows so that entering personnel don t blunder into a rapidly developing scenario. 

The second phase may involve a breakdown of a barrier function. A barrier function is a safety feature such as a shutdown valve or containment system, a procedure, or the communication system. AVhen these safety systems fail, the incident then evolves from an undesirable occurrence to a near miss and, if enough barriers fail, the incident could finally progress to a minor or major accident or operational interruption depending upon the consequences or circumstances. 

This definition is widely accepted within the safety critical systems community. Safety case can be considered as a special case of the trust case where focus is on a specific trust objective, i.e., safety, and highly demanding requirements are needed to be met by the base supporting the case. 

The generic standard of the safety community is IEC 61508, Functional Safety of E/E/PE safety-related Systems. The engineering community has built a set of standards based on IEC 61508 for specific sectors, taking into account the experiences, background knowledge and requirements the process control sector, medical sector, nuclear, railways, and is still continuing (e.g., automotive in progress). But this standard takes only the safety view, security is not even mentioned ... 

On the other hand, we have ISO 15508 (Common Criteria, focusing on component evaluation) and ISO 17799 (system guidelines on security, holistic, not only IT), for Security. They have even another language than the safety community, and another view what levels of protection mean (EALs vs. SILs). From the dependability point of view, requirements could be derived for security features and profiles depending on the SILs required for safety. Allocations could be done not only between HW, SW and components on functional level with respect to safety but with respect to security also. But interaction and discussion would be necessary (Note The aspects of multilateral security could be correlated to SILs according to... 

It has been demonstrated, that mass deployment of networked, dependable embedded systems with critical control functions require a new, holistic system view on safety critical and security critical systems. Both communities have to interact, communicate and integrate at the end. A unified approach to address the safety AND security requirements of safety related systems is proposed, based on the functional safety standard IEC 61508 and IT-Security management standards, handbooks and guidelines. 

Also, procedures must be in place to control defeating safety critical systems. Before taking these systems out of service for any length of time, there must be proper authority, communication and detailed contingency planning. 

A Safe Operating Procedure developed to create a uniform method to ensure that appropriate steps are taken prior to bypassing or removing an alarm, instrument, or shutdown system IWim service is described in the section that follows. This procedure can provide an effective way of communicating the status of an impaired instrument. The procedure has been in use for over five years. It assumes that all instrumentation has been classified into three safety critical systems. [7] (These classes have been defined in Chapter 9, but are repeated here.)... 

Covello, V. von Winterfeldt, D. Slovic, P. "Risk Communication An Assessment of Literature on Communicating Information About Health, Safety, and Environmental Risks". Draft Preliminary Report to the EPA, Institute of Safety and Systems Management, University of Southern California, January 11, 1986. 

As the European Union enlarges, it is essential that the ACC and NMS have implemented food safety control systems equivalent to those in place within the Community. This represents a significant challenge to those countries, in terms of ... 

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