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Increasing automation is a major trend in container terminals. In automated container handling systems, safety has been previously ensured by segregating the automated machinery from other traffic and workers moving on foot. Currently, further increases in flexibility are sought by developing autonomous systems that are capable of mixed-traffic operations without the need for separate operating areas. This increases the complexity of the systems and introduces new safety hazards. In addition to traditional hazard analysis methods, new approaches are needed to address the emergent risks related to autonomous operations. This paper studies the applicability of the STPA (system-theoretic process analysis) method in hazard analysis of an autonomous machine system. To support the evaluation, we define evaluation categories for comparison of the analysis methods. We also compare STPA with an established method, HAZOP (hazard and operability study). To perform the comparison, both STPA and HAZOP are applied to an autonomous container handling system concept. The study suggests that both STPA and HAZOP are well suited to support the development of autonomous machinery. However, we also highlight some notable differences in the methods, mostly related to the different underlying accident models that they utilise. HAZOP is an established method with tools and standards available. STPA, on the other hand, provides a well-defined syntax to ensure the analysis quality and a system modelling approach that supports the system development.

Microgrids can be used for securing power supply during network outages. Underground cabling of distribution networks is another effective, but conventional and expensive alternative to enhance reliability of power supply. This paper presents firstly an analysis method for the determination of microgrid power supply adequacy during islanded operation, and secondly, a comparison method for overall cost calculation of microgrids vs. underground cabling. The microgrid power adequacy during a rather long network outage is required in order to indicate high level of reliability of supply. The overall cost calculations consider the economic benefits and costs incurred combined for both the distribution network company and the consumer. Whereas the microgrid setup determines the islanded operation power adequacy and thus the reliability of supply, the economic feasibility results from the normal operations and services. The methods are illustrated by two typical, and even critical, case studies in rural distribution networks: an electric-heated detached house and a dairy farm. These case studies show that even in case of a single consumer, a microgrid option could be more economical than network renovation by underground cabling of a branch in order to increase reliability.

Efficient response to maritime incidents and accidents requires good communication processes and situation awareness by all involved parties, in particular between the Search and Rescue (SAR) response operators and the crew of the distressed vessel. In this paper, a method is proposed for enhancing the communication between the involved parties, by focusing on the safety status of the vessel. Borrowing ideas from well-established working methods in especially emergency medicine, the Vessel TRIAGE method has been established through a broad stakeholder consultation process. Its intended application is to assess and communicate whether a vessel can provide a safe environment for the people onboard. Using a set of threat factors and a four-level ship safety categorization, the method aims to establish a shared understanding of the nature of the distress situation, which in turn has implications for the operational focus of the SAR operators and vessel crew. An evaluation of the proposed method indicates a positive reception among various maritime stakeholders, suggesting that implementing the Vessel TRIAGE method in maritime SAR procedures may act as a useful tool to assist in the management of maritime distress situations.

This paper studies the effect of joint ownership of microgrids as a means to share the owners' annual cost/profit risks and create incentives for investing in microgrids instead of underground cabling. Underground cabling is acknowledged as a costly and often times unprofitable - but unavoidable - solution for the distribution network operator (DNO) to improve the distribution network resiliency to interruptions in rural areas in Finland. The study demonstrates how the ratio of ownership and mutual agreements would affect the distribution of monetary risk between the DNO and the customers forming the microgrid (i.e. User group), which are the key shareholders. The methodological basis is the standard mean-variance analysis related to volatile assets and the Value-At-Risk concept, which reflects the risk attitude of the shareholders. The methodology presupposes and examines the DNO to be permitted have a double role as the traditional operator of power distribution, and being a small-scale power producer together with the prosumers. The demonstrated case shows how mutual arrangements of ownership shares and fees may be determined such that a joint investment in a microgrid system outperforms the underground cabling solution in terms of annual cost/profit. The study could pave a way to a systematic risk-based means of communicating risk attitude and incentive to form a microgrid in cases where underground cabling seems unfeasible.

In this study we describe the need for risk management approaches that facilitate studying major economic changes and taking into account the impacts of new and emerging technologies. We took circular economy as a case study because the current change from a linear economy to a circulation economy creates positive environmental, economic and social impacts. However, circulation economy creates,in addition to opportunities, also new risks. The results show that industry already works in the field of circular economy. However, the managing of risks and opportunities are not at the conscious level, but rather exist randomly.

Many major disturbances in the electricity supply have taken place in the last decade causing significant problems in the functioning of the modern society. In major disturbances there are multiple organizational actors like fire and rescue services, emergency response centres, police and municipalities along with distribution system operators (DSOs) and network repairers involved in the management of disturbance situations. In previous studies, lack of inter-organizational situation awareness in disturbance situations has been noticed. After the storms in Finland in 2011 it was proposed that DSOs should be obligated to co-operate with public authorities and deliver information to them in major disturbances. The paper presents a demonstration of the inter-organizational situation awareness system developed in this research and compares it with other systems. The aim of the comparison is to find similarities and differences in the systems so that the situation awareness in major disturbances of the electricity supply could be improved.

Transbox ja VTT kehittivät elintarvikkeiden laatikkokiertoa riskikartoituksella Logproofprojektissa. Työ toi esiin yli 70 riskiä ja poiki noin 40 parannusehdotusta.

Many major disturbances in the supply of electric power have taken place in Finland in last decade causing significant problems in the functioning of the modern society. In major disturbances there are multiple organizational actors like fire and rescue services, emergency response centers, police and municipalities along with distribution system operators (DSOs) and network repairers involved in the management of disturbance situations. In previous studies, lack of shared situation awareness in disturbance situations has been noticed. After the latest storms in Finland it is proposed that DSOs should be obligated to co-operate with public authorities and deliver information to them in major disturbances. In this paper, a concept of the shared situation awareness in disturbances has been presented. The paper also presents a demonstration based on the concept. (4 pages)

The reliability of electricity supply is in modern societies generally on a very high level. However, there have been power interruptions that have severely impacted on the functioning of a society, and on the safety and well-being of citizens - and the possibility for severe interruptions remains also in future. Responsibility to prepare against power interruptions does not rest in Finland only with network operators, but responsible are also electricity users and public actors like rescue services and municipalities. The topic of this paper is the preparedness of Finnish electricity users against major disturbances in supply of electric power. The paper is based on a questionnaire study directed to 86 Finnish distribution system operators. According to the questionnaire, with a response rate of about 60 per cent, it seems that there would be a need to enhance the preparedness against major disturbances in almost every electricity user type.

This paper is part of a project that studies risk analysis and management methods for major disturbances in the supply of electric power. In this project, a major disturbance in the supply of electric power is defined as a long lasting or widespread interruption in the supply of electric power, during which the fire and rescue services and one or more other public actor (municipality, police, etc.) need, in addition to the distribution system operator (DSO), to start implementing measures for reducing possible severe consequences to people and property. In Finland, in 2001 storms Pyry and Janika and four storms of the summer 2010 are good examples of major disturbances. In these storms, some individual customers were left without electricity even for weeks. Major outage in UCTE's area in November 2006 concerned a wide area in Europe and caused societal consequences even if it was short lasting. As represented in the definition, major disturbances also require actions from authorities. In many previous studies, it has come up that there is a need for better communication between actors in major disturbances.

In the current evolving global economy societies have become increasingly dependent on imported goods. Due to this, the role of transport logistics has become very important. Reliability of delivery is a key characteristic of the logistic system which the National Emergency Supply Agency of Finland wants to secure and maintain. A research programme was started in 2005 to support the risk assessment and management of the national logistic system as part of the national security of supply system. The main objective of the LOGHU project is to develop a risk assessment framework for identification and ranking of threats and countermeasures in relation to the logistic system. The paper presents intermediate results from the on-going research programme.

Due to regulation power quality and reliability issues are now one of the major concerns in network management business. Many utilities endeavour to rationalize their network operations and optimize total life cycle costs of their network components without endangering the reliability and safety of the network. New type of modelling methods which utilise collected network information more effectively can help utilities in managing this kind of asset management problems. One type of enhanced asset management tool can be based on distribution network reliability analysis. Failure rate models used in traditional reliability analysis are based on constant failure rate without any consideration of operational stresses and environmental factors of the network components. In the paper an advanced failure rate modelling is depicted. As a basis for the modelling, a large amount of failure data with accurate environmental information from various network utilities has been collected and analysed. Failure rate model together with the distribution network reliability and cost analysis has been implemented as a part of the distribution network planning software, which is also shortly depicted in this paper.

The Finnish pressure equipment legislation was recentry renewed. According to the new legislation, a boiler plant hazard assessment must be carried out in certain boiler plants. The plant's owner and holder must identify potential hazards, their causes and consequences. Furthermore, the significance of the identified hazard scenarios and the appropriateness of the risk reduction measures and safety precautions must be assessed. All this, i.e. the description of the plant's hazard assessment process and its results, must be in the form of a written report to be presented to the inspection body for approval. The paper presents the hazard assessment requirements, an approach to fulfil it, and experiences based on projects carried out by VTT.

VTT Valmistustekniikan Turvallisuustekniikan tutkimusalueella on kehitetty uusia menetelmiä laitostason riskien analysointiin. Tämä esitys kuvaa lyhyesti kehitettyä hierarkkisen (kohdentuvan) riskianalyysin menettelytapaa sovellettuna kattilalaitoksen analysointiin. Myös joitakin kattilalaitosten riskianalyyseista saatuja kokemuksia ja tuloksia esitellään. Lopuksi kuvataan joitakin kehitystrendejä, joiden seurauksena systemaattisten riskianalyysimenetelmien merkitys tulee tulevaisuudessa todennäköisesti korostumaan kattilalaitosten riskienhallinnassa.

The Finnish pressure equipment legislation was recently renewed. According to the new legislation, a boiler plant hazard assessment must be carried out in certain boiler plants. The plant's owner and holder must identify potential hazards, their causes and consequences. Furthermore, the significance of the identified hazard scenarios and the appropriateness of the risk reduction measures and safety precautions must be assessed. All this, i.e. the description of the plant's hazard assessment process and its results, must be in the form of a written report to be presented to the inspection body for approval. The paper presents an approach to fulfil the requirement, and the experiences based on several projects carried out by VTT.

The cyber security position of Finnish smart metering was analysed in a research project together with key stakeholders. In this paper, the project and its results are presented. The stakeholders comprised the representatives of Distribution System Operators, and technology and service providers. The targets of analysis were their state-of-the-practice solutions existing in the field. Nearly all consumers already had smart meters, settlement based on real, hourly interval-metered consumption and access to their own consumption data via the Internet. The primary contributions of this paper are twofold. First, the findings of the analysis, i.e., the risks and the risk levels (occurrence frequencies and severities) as experienced by the stakeholders are given, together with recommendations for development targets, which may help in analysing other existing systems and developing security solutions for the systems under development. Second, the smart metering reference model is presented, which abstracts the various individual implementations at the level where systematic analysis is possible. The analysed Finnish smart metering systems are reasonably safe. The biggest threats were considered to be the leak of private customer data from the on-line access servers in the Internet and a large-scale failure in the remote software upgrade of the smart meters

Wave power is a potential technology for producing cost-efficient renewable energy. Reliability is one of the key issues to be considered in the design of wave energy converter (WEC) devices. To address the issue of reliability, we present a proposed design approach based on reliability block diagram (RBD) modeling. Based on experiences of utilizing the RBD approach, we provide some preliminary insights on the key characteristics of the RBD approach and its suitability to WEC design.

The development of automated mobile machines towards autonomous operation is proceeding rapidly in many industrial sectors. New technologies and their increasing complexity set challenges for designing safe and reliable machinery and systems. One big challenge is to manage system-level safety and reliability risks with cost-effective solutions in applications where autonomous machinery, manual machines and employees aims to work in the same area. Three safety design approaches for autonomous machinery are introduced and discussed through the requirements and constraints imposed by system operating concepts and operating environments. The key element in machine autonomy is adaptability to dynamically changing environment based on the available information. Current safety engineering methods developed for automated machinery do not cover or consider autonomy aspects like dynamic risk assessment or independent decision-making. Safety standards for the design of autonomous machinery applications are also discussed.

Major disturbances in electricity supply have impacted the functioning of society and the well-being and safety of Finnish citizens in recent years [1, 2]. Official post-disturbance reports [3, 4] have highlighted the need for significant improvements in information exchange between distribution system operators (DSOs), rescue services and municipalities during power outages. An information system concept to notably enhance the informa tion exchange and multi-actor management of major disturbances was developed in a research project carried out by VTT and TUT. [5]

VTT Automaatio on kehittänyt menetelmän kattilalaitoksen suojausjärjestelmien tarkasteluun. Tämä liittyy osana painelaitelain mukaiseen laitoksen vaaran arviointiin.

The Finnish pressure equipment legislation was renewed in 1999. In order to improve safety in boiler plants, hazard assessment requirement came into effect for certain boiler plants. Requirement applies to plants with a steam boiler above 6 MW or a hot water boiler above 15 MW. According to the requirement, potential hazards and their causes and consequences in the plant must be identified. In addition, significance of hazards must be assessed, as well as the appropriateness of risk reduction measures and safety precautions. The hazard assessment process and its results must be described as a written report. The aim of the requirement is to raise knowledge of the plant's personnel on plant's safety and, thereby, help them to identify possible deficiencies in the current situation and to make improvements. An approach to boiler plant hazard assessment is described in this paper. The approach is based on the experience VTT Automation has obtained from several hazard assessment projects done for different plants according to the "Seveso II" directive (or the previous version) and other requirements. The approach is described by means of the main phases of the hazard assessment process. Some experiences and results based on case studies are also presented at the end of this paper.

MegaRoller wave energy converter (WEC) concept is being developed to produce cost-efficient renewable energy from the kinetic energy of ocean waves. The MegaRoller device consists of an oscillating flange, which captures the energy from waves, and two power take-off (PTO) systems that convert the kinetic energy into electricity. In the MegaRoller concept, the PTOs employ a hydraulic system that is used in producing electricity that fulfils power quality requirements and achieves system-level reliability targets. During its operation, the MegaRoller device is submerged, making reactive maintenance costly and impractical. Thus, the system is designed for a long maintenance interval. Careful reliability analysis is needed to predict the system reliability performance and assess the survivability of the device over the intended scheduled maintenance interval, keeping in mind the harsh maritime operating environment.In this paper, we present results from reliability analysis of the hydraulic system in MegaRoller PTO. The analysis utilizes a system modeling and simulation approach based on reliability block diagrams (RBDs). RBD is a probabilistic reliability engineering method that can be used to predict system availability over time. It describes the system components as a combination of interconnected blocks, each assigned with a probability distribution describing the component’s reliability performance. As a visual method, it provides an easily comprehensible representation of the system reliability structure. It also supports the identification of most reliability-critical components and highlights important areas for reliability improvement. In our modelling approach, we utilize RBD calculation based on Monte Carlo simulation, created in ReliaSoft BlockSim software. In addition to building the actual system model, another major task is to identify and interpret relevant data sources to be able to assign reliability predictions for individual components. This is particularly challenging in new product development, as failure data from previous installations is not widely available.The main three contributions presented in this paper are the following. First, we describe the system modeling process, highlighting some identified advantages and disadvantages of the RBD approach. Second, we describe the work done to identify reliability data sources and discuss their suitability in the wave energy context. Finally, we present selected results from the PTO hydraulic system RBD modeling effort.