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National University of Singapore
Master of Science
Safety, Health & Environmental Technology
SH5203
Emergency Planning
Assignment 1: Literature Review
Incorporating Resilience into Business Continuity and
Emergency Management for the Petroleum and Process
Industry
by
Yeo Pu Zhong Oliver (A0042338L)
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Assignment 1
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CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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2
INTRODUCTION
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3
DEFINITIONS
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4
CURRENT TRENDS
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5
CURRENT RESEARCH EFFORTS
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6
FUTURE RESEARCH AREAS
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9
CONCLUDING REMARKS
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9
REFERENCES
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10
Word Count (excluding Executive Summary): 2546 words.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This essay attempts to summarise current research efforts on the
topic of resilience as it
relates to Business Continuity Management (BCM), Emergency
Management (EM) and
Disaster Recovery (DR) in the petroleum and process
industries.
The main challenges facing risk managers today are the
increasingly complex operations,
new technologies and limited resources dedicated to BCM, EM and
DR. These processes are
gradually being integrated into a single process, given that
they are highly inter-dependent.
The concept of resilience has recently been proposed as a
unifying factor in these processes;
however, there is insufficient academic progress to support and
encourage widespread
adoption of the concept.
Several new ideas proposed in recent years seem promising in
advancing the field of
resilience. Practitioners of resilience engineering (RE) have
developed qualitative, semi-
quantitative and fully-quantitative methods for measuring
organisational or process
resilience.
The paradigm shift introduced by RE includes core principles
such as anticipation, awareness
and flexibility; established risk management strategies based on
hindsight can be
complemented with foresight-based strategies to improve
organisational resilience.
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INTRODUCTION
The petroleum and process industry is an essential part of the
modern industrial era. It
provides the world with fuel and hydrocarbon-based products, and
produces the feedstock for
many synthetic chemicals necessary for sustaining our
civilisation.
There are inherently high risks associated with the industry.
Huge inventories of hazardous
material can be released into the environment in the event of a
mishap, often resulting in
disastrous consequences. The daily operation of a facility (be
it an offshore drilling rig, a
refinery, or a petrochemical plant) requires many components to
function at a satisfactory
level. These components can be independent, interconnected or
interdependent; the resulting
system is a highly complex one with many uncertain
parameters.
In addition to that, the industry faces many challenges in these
times of increasing cost
pressures and diminishing margins; new technologies are
constantly being explored and
implemented so as to improve the efficiencies of the equipment
and productivities of the
workforce. This is especially true due to advances in
Information and Communication
Technology (ICT). New work processes are being developed in the
workplace to take
advantage of the capabilities of new ICT tools.
Being the pioneer and leader in the application of process
management systems (PMS) and
safety management systems (SMS), there is a need for the
industry to review its approach to
these management tools through cross-disciplinary perspectives.
Business continuity
management (BCM) has been an established management tool in the
Information Technology
(IT) sector; however, the domain for BCM remains in the IT group
for many organisations
(Gibb, et al., 2006).
Intimately linked to BCM is Emergency Management (EM) and
Disaster Recovery Plan
(DRP), which deal with separate time horizons in the event of an
unplanned mishap. Several
researchers have proposed an integrated BCM, EM and DR framework
(Sin, et al., 2013;
Sahebjamnia, et al., 2015; Zhang, et al., 2013) in an effort to
streamline these processes and
facilitate sharing of resources.
The concept of resilience has been proposed as an important
characteristic of a high-risk,
complex, dynamic and unstable system (Azadeh, et al., 2014;
Costella, et al., 2009; Dinh, et
al., 2012; Sahebjamnia, et al., 2015; Tveiten, et al., 2012;
Sin, et al., 2013; Huber, et al.,
2009; Shirali, et al., 2012). Resilience has been studied for
many years in non-chemical
disciplines, such as biology, psychology, organisational
science, computer science, and
ecology. In industrial processes, the concept remained
relatively undeveloped (Dinh, et al.,
2012).
This essay attempts to summarise current research efforts on the
topic of resilience as it
relates to BCM, EM and DR in the petroleum and process
industries. It comprises of five
chapters: Introduction, Definitions, Current Trends, Current
Research Efforts, and Future
Research Areas.
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DEFINITIONS
Business Continuity
Business continuity of an organisation refers to its ability to
continue delivery of products or
services at a predefined level in the aftermath of a disruptive
event (ISO 22301:2012).
Business Continuity Management (BCM) or Business Continuity
Planning (BCP) are used to
refer to a process which identifies potential threats/risks and
their impacts to business and
provides a framework for organisational resilience (ISO
22301:2012).
The objective of a business continuity plan is to resume
disrupted Critical Operations (COs)
of an organization to the predefined operating levels as quickly
and efficiently as possible
(Sahebjamnia, et al., 2015).
Emergency Management
Emergency Management (EM), or Emergency Planning, refers to a
set of measures
(technical, operational and organisational) that are planned to
be implemented under the
management of the emergency organisation in case hazardous or
accidental situations occur,
in order to protect human and environmental resources and assets
(NORSOK Standard Z-
013).
The objectives of an emergency plan are to contain and control
incidents, to safeguard
employees and anyone nearby who might be affected, and to
minimise damage to property or
the environment (Ramsay, 1999).
Disaster Recovery
The objective of a Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan is to restore all
disrupted operations to their
normal operating levels following any disruptive events
(Sahebjamnia, et al., 2015).
Resilience
The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
(UNISDR) provided a
broad definition of resilience as relevant to the topic of
Disaster Risk Management (DRM):
The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards
to resist,
absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard
in a timely
and efficient manner, including through the preservation and
restoration of its
essential basic structures and functions (UNISAR, 20009).
In the context of BCM and EM for an organisation, resilience is
a measure of its ability to
keep, or recover quickly to, a stable state, allowing it to
continue operations during and after
a major mishap or in the presence of continuous significant
stresses (Wreathall, 2006).
Resilience Engineering
Resilience Engineering (RE) refers to the field in engineering
which focus on developing
inherent capacity within a system to cope with complex and
unpredicted events (Shirali, et
al., 2011). It focuses on modelling and development of
decision-support tools for the
practitioners (Robert, et al., 2013).
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CURRENT TRENDS
BCP and DRP
The consequences of poor BC and DR planning are loss of
reputation, loss of market share,
customer service failure, business process failure, regulatory
liability and increased
restoration time (Sahebjamnia, et al., 2015). This highlights
the importance of having a robust
process for BC and DR planning, and points to incorporating the
overall emergency
management process into a continuous improvement cycle using
hazard and risk management
process (Tveiten, et al., 2012).
Sahebjamnia (2015) highlighted a concern that BCP and DRP are
conducted separately and
for different time horizons within organisations. Indeed,
efforts are put in to develop an
integrated framework for these management tools under a single
umbrella which is risk
management (Sin, et al., 2013; Zhang, et al., 2013; Sahebjamnia,
et al., 2015). The
researchers argue that BCP, DRP and EM are interlinked with each
other; merging the
planners into a single group will synergise the process and
improve resource allocation.
Integrated Operations (IO)
Tveiten (2012) described a series of changes that are happening
on the Norwegian continental
shelf (NCS) offshore drilling industry. One of the significant
developments as a result of
advances in ICT is the adoption of Integrated Operations (IO).
IO broadly refers to new work
processes facilitated by digital infrastructure and information
technology which allows multi-
discipline collaboration in the operation of a facility. These
work processes heavily involve
the use of data transfer between onshore support centres and
offshore installations such as
video conference, real-time well monitoring, 3-D visualization,
etc. Personnel can be shifted
onshore to support multiple offshore installations, improving
efficiency and productivity of
the operations.
Distributed Actors
A direct consequence of IO is that in the event of an emergency,
there is an increased number
of actors who are spread out geographically and have to work
together to handle the
emergency situation (Tveiten, et al., 2012). It is critical to
control the flow of information and
ensure that each actor has access to real-time data seamlessly.
Paradoxically, even as process
adopts new ICT tools, there is a lack of use of these tools in
the EM process (Tveiten, et al.,
2012).
Challenges in Incorporating Resilience
It is difficult to incorporate resilience into the process
industry due to the fact that the theory
of resilience is still only conceptual (Dinh, et al., 2012).
There is a need to identify basic
principles and contributing factors of resilience.
A related issue is that there is no established method of
assessing resilience quantitatively.
This makes it difficult for risk managers to justify adoption of
resilience principles and
incorporate the concept into their existing management
systems.
The introduction of new technology creates new causes of
failure. The managers of
organisational risk have to recognise that relying on hindsight
cannot adequate address these
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new sources of risk; anticipation and foresight must become the
new paradigm shift in risk
management and emergency planning (Shirali, et al., 2012;
Tveiten, et al., 2012). A cyclical
process of reviewing and revising the BCM, EM and DR plans to
account for these
technological changes is not widely practised.
CURRENT RESEARCH EFFORTS
Concept of Resilience
The concept of resilience is developed separately in multiple
disciplines (such as sociology,
ecology, economics, etc.); there is no definitive consensus on
the application of resilience
(MacAskill, et al., 2014). The definition of resilience depends
on the application and
quantification approaches of the researchers (Dinh, et al.,
2012). Resilience can be used to
describe an outcome, a state, a systems property, a physical
property, a process, etc. It can
mean to return to the same state or the ability to transit
between multiple states. Yet, vague as
it is, this diversity should be embraced (MacAskill, et al.,
2014). MacAskill & Guthrie
proposed a conceptual framework to develop cross-disciplinary
understanding of resilience in
Disaster Risk Management (DRM).
Figure 1 Conceptual framework for helping safety practitioners
think about resilience (MacAskill, et
al., 2014)
This framework is useful for the petroleum and process
industries as well. The context and
application of resilience change when different systems are
being considered. For example,
the resilience of a chemical process plant can encompass a wide
scale, from the safety
management system (SMS), the operational controls and procedures
and the overall plant
design, down to individual equipment and components. The time
horizon being considered
can include pre-disaster (prevention), during the disruptive
event (mitigation and emergency
response) and post-disaster (recovery). Societal consideration,
in this case, can refer to the
human factors of an emergency handling situation (Gomes, et al.,
2014), and perhaps even
the resilience (emergency preparedness) of the surrounding
communities (MacAskill, et al.,
2014).
Principles of Resilience
Several researchers have devoted efforts to identify the
principles of resilience. There is no
consensus among current practitioners; each academic adopt a set
of terminologies to define
his or her model (Costella, et al., 2009). Azadeh et al. (2014)
summarized a list of principles
and prioritised them using the fuzzy cognitive mapping
technique. This is a semi-quantitative
Resilience
Context
Scale Chrono Societal
Application
Perspective Object
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method which helps practitioners assign priority and weight to
RE factors. The result of the
study is presented in the figure below.
Figure 2 Principles of resilience engineering (RE) (Azadeh, et
al., 2014)
Dinh et al. (2012) proposed a separate set of principles that
are applicable to the process
industries. They cited contributing factors of resilience as
Design, Detection Potential,
Emergency Response Plan, Human Factor and Safety Management.
Measuring Resilience
Costella et al. (2009) applied the process of auditing to assess
the resilience of an
organisation. They make use of three approaches to auditing:
structural, operational, and
performance. Structural auditing ensures that the documents in
the HSE management system
(MS) are adequate and current. Operational auditing verifies
that the procedures as
documented in the HSE MS are put into practice through
interviews and observation of staff.
Performance auditing relies on the analysis of performance
indicators to evaluate the progress
of the organisation. The advantage of this approach is that it
can be easily aligned with
OHSAS 18001, given that resilience and safety management share
many principles and
factors (Costella, et al., 2009).
Shirali et al. (2012) adopted a similar approach in their
measurement of resilience. They
conducted surveys through direct observations and interviews,
and concluded that the main
challenges of implementing RE into the process industry could be
classified into nine
categories: lack of explicit experience about RE, intangibility
of RE, choosing production
over safety, lack of reporting systems, religious beliefs,
out-of-date procedures and
manuals, poor feedback loop, and economic constraints.
Another qualitative approach involves the use of a
micro-incident analysis framework, which
was used to assess the resilience of a management system for a
nuclear power plant (Gomes,
et al., 2014). This type of cognitive task analysis (CTA)
technique helps to provide insights
into the cognitive aspect of an emergency handling situation and
identify team coordination
and crisis management patterns (Gomes, et al., 2014).
A semi-quantitative approach, which is tightly linked to the
auditing process, is the use of
performance indicators. Huber et al. (2009) proposed a framework
to aid in the development
of indicators through a cyclical process. The steps involves:
identifying resilience factors,
Most Influential
Least Influential
Prepareness
Awareness
Flexibility
Fault-tolerant
Learning culture
Reporting culture
Management commitment
Teawork
Redundancy
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proposing resilience indicators, assessing organizational
resilience and finally assessing and
improving resilience indicators.
A quantitative method was proposed by Sahebjamnia et al. (2015).
They defined resilience as
a function of loss of operating level after a disruptive event
and the time it took for the
organisation to restore its operations to the normal level. This
mathematical relation was then
used in a resource allocation model to optimize the resources
required to cope with disruptive
events under an integrated framework of BC and DR. The
advantages of the resource
allocation model is that it allows simultaneous development of
BCP and DRP, allows
optimization of resource allocation and controls the losses of
operating levels and restoration
times simultaneously. This study addressed the gap in devising
decision support models for
an integrated BC and DR planning framework where other
researches only focus on its
features (i.e. principles and factors).
Other quantitative methods include using experimental
disturbances to assess resilience along
a known stress gradient (Slocum, et al., 2008) and using an
exergy stress and strain curve to
track changes imparted onto a system (Mitchell, et al.,
2006).
Distributed Actors Map
Traditionally, an emergency organisation chart is in the form of
a hierarchical chart, with the
Incident Headquarters at the top and branching off into
different actors in an emergency. In
the case of an offshore installation, the hierarchical approach
breaks down as the number of
actors increase and becomes increasingly decentralised. A
distributed actor map (figure
below) can provide a useful visualisation for all parties
responding to an emergency situation
(Tveiten, et al., 2012). It can help to facilitate flow of
information and create an awareness of
who should be involved and consulted in an emergency
situation.
Figure 3 A distributed actor map from an emergency handling
situation (Tveiten, et al., 2012)
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FUTURE RESEARCH AREAS
Conceptually, resilience and RE have reached a turning point.
There appears to be consensus
among practitioners on the core principles of resilience and RE;
however, there remains
varied use of terminologies. The cross-disciplinary conceptual
framework proposed by
MacAskill & Guthrie (2014) has the potential to serve as the
basis for future research on the
topic.
The field of RE requires more research in quantitative
assessment of resilience; most of
previous academic pursuits targeted the qualitative and
conceptual results. A numerical
method for assessing resilience can provide managers with a more
useful tool and also instil
confidence in RE.
Future mathematical models of resilience should consider
simultaneous or consecutive
multiple disruptive incidents, and also make use of uncertainty
programming techniques due
to the inherent uncertainty in the models parameters
(Sahebjamnia, et al., 2015).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Resilience is a relatively new concept in the petroleum and
process industry. Numerous
studies have shown that it is an important characteristic of a
high-risk, complex and uncertain
system. The concept of resilience is intertwined with the
objectives of business continuity,
emergency management and disaster recovery; however, it is not
being explicitly recognised
as such. The paradigm shift introduced by resilience engineering
includes core principles
such as anticipation, awareness and flexibility; established
risk management strategies based
on hindsight can be complemented with foresight-based strategies
to improve organisational
resilience. Researchers have made headways in identifying
principles and contributing factors
of organisational resilience; current efforts are focused on
establishing semi-quantitative and
quantitative methods for assessing it.
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REFERENCES
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