Safety system optimization by improved strength Pareto evolutionary approach (SPEA2).

Safety systems are designed to prevent the occurrence of certain conditions and their future development into a hazardous situation. The consequence of the failure of a safety system of a potentially hazardous industrial system or process varies from minor inconvenience and cost, to personal injury, significant economic loss and death. To minimise the likelihood of a hazardous situation, safety systems must be designed to maximise their availability. The purpose of this paper is to describe a design optimization scheme using a multi-objective genetic algorithm applied to an offshore platform process. The optimization criteria involves unavailability, cost, spurious trip and maintenance down time to obtain an optimal safety system design. Analyses of individual system designs are carried out using the latest advantages of the fault tree analysis technique and the binary decision diagram approach. The improved strength Pareto evolutionary approach (SPEA2) is chosen to perform the system optimization resulting in the final design specifications. The results produced using this method are compared to those using a single objective optimization approach. The overall conclusions show the benefit of using this technique for the application system.