Marilia Ramos

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · The B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences

Numerous research and industry initiatives have increasingly aimed at developing maritime surface autonomous ships (MASS). Among the motivations for the use of MASS is the potential increase in safety when compared to traditional manned ships-particularly regarding human error. However, in spite of having less human intervention , MASS will rely on...

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) are the subject of a diversity of projects and some are in testing phase. MASS will probably include operators working in a shore control center (SCC), whose responsibilities may vary from supervision to remote control, according to Level of Autonomy (LoA) of the voyage. Moreover, MASS may operate with a dyn...

In the petroleum industry, Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) has been one of the main tools for risk management. To date, QRA has mostly focused on technical barriers, despite many accidents having human failure as a primary cause or a contributing factor. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) allows for the assessment of the human contribution to risk t...

The advent of automated vehicles (AVs) will provide opportunities for safer, smoother, and smarter road transportation. During the transition from the current human-driven vehicle (HV) to a fully AV traffic environment, there will be a mixed traffic flow including both HVs and AVs. The impact of introducing AVs into existing traffic, however, has n...

The increasing use of autonomous systems (AS) aims to improve efficiency, costs, and safety of numerous operations. Yet, they also pose several safety challenges. Most of AS will operate in a dynamic environment, interacting with non-autonomous and/or other autonomous systems. The anticipation of both the AS and non-AS possible decisions during the...

Human reliability analysis (HRA) is the most acknowledged methodology to assess the probability of human errors depending on the tasks and its contextual factors. There are many methods available, but some exploratory research show that only a few of them are frequently cited in research papers, or even accepted by safety regulators. This paper des...

The International Workshop for Autonomous System Safety (IWASS) is a joint effort by the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA-GIRS) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). IWASS is an invitation-only event designed to be a platform for cross-industrial and interdisc...

This chapter summarizes the findings concerning the operation of automated ferries. First, a use-case on a planned passenger ferry in Norway is presented. Next, a gap analysis is carried out on the proposed solution against applicable rules. Finally, the outcome of the gap analysis is used as input for operational procedures, including decision cri...

System risk analysis and safety assessments of Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS) have mostly focused on aspects of the vehicle's functionality, performance, and interactions with other road users under various driving scenarios. However, as the deployment of ADS becomes more common, the importance of addressing risks arising from fleet management op...

The safe and reliable operation of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) in the context of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) depends on a multitude of factors external to the vehicle's functionality and performance. In particular, it is expected that Level 4 ADS operations are supported by the actions of remote operators, specifically during the initial stage...

Wildfire is a significant threat to many communities in Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) areas and ensuring an efficient evacuation of these communities in case of wildfire is a pressing challenge. Wildfire evacuation modeling consists of three main layers: fire model, human decision-making, and traffic models. Thus, an efficient evacuation planning...

Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) can be defined as "the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development." The communities in these areas are particularly vulnerable to wildfires that start and propagate in wildlands. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to address the dangers of wildfires, including building more resilient infrastru...

Quantitative risk analysis (QRA) is a systematic methodology to identify, analyze, and calculate risks of an operation or installation of hazardous facilities. One of the first steps of a QRA is the qualitative categorization of the frequency and severity of potential accidents. This task is performed by a group of experts and can be very time and...

Risk assessment and management are some of the major tasks of urban power-grid management. The growing amount of data from, e.g., prediction systems, sensors, and satellites has enabled access to numerous datasets originating from a diversity of heterogeneous data sources. While these advancements are of great importance for more accurate and trust...

Automation and an increasing level of autonomy are not novelties in aircraft cockpits. One of the main goals of automation in aviation is to increase pilots' situation awareness (SA) and reduce their workload-both of high importance for a safe flight. Increasing automation has historically reduced aviation accident rates and improved efficiency. Ye...

Phoenix is a model-based Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) method developed to overcome key issues of the 1 st and 2 nd generation HRA methods. These issues can result in discrepancies, deficient traceability and reproducibility issues in the qualitative and quantitative aspects of HRA. To overcome those issues Phoenix is founded on a human response...

From its first applications to the military domain, HRA progressed to applications in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) operations, when development and validation of methods mainly targeted their use in Probabilistic Risk Assessments. In recent years, advances in HRA include the extension to various application fields, the development of new methods or...

WASS is a platform for cross-industrial and interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge on autonomous systems’ Safety, Reliability, and Security (SRS), by invited experts and observers. The workshop gathers experts from academia, industry, and regulatory agencies, to discuss SRS challenges and their potential solutions for SRS of autonomous systems fro...

Autonomous marine systems may switch between various operational modes with different levels of autonomy (LoA), due to a rapidly changing environment and the complex nature of tasks. The dynamic autonomy brings an additional layer of complexity to ensuring safe marine operations, but this functionality is not sufficiently considered in current risk...

In the petroleum industry, Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) has been one of the main tools for risk management. To date, QRA has mostly focused on technical barriers, despite many accidents having human failure as a primary cause or a contributing factor. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) allows for the assessment of the human contribution to risk t...

Several incidents in the offshore oil and gas industry have human errors among core events in incident sequence. Nonetheless, human error probabilities are frequently neglected by offshore risk estimation. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) allows human failures to be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. In the petroleum industry, HRA is u...

Technological developments allow for gathering and processing an increasing amount of data in real time. The integration of these tools into risk assessment allows for the development of dynamic risk assessment and data-driven decision support. The latter is of special interest for systems that are remotely monitored and controlled by operator, suc...

Autonomous systems may operate with different Levels of Autonomy (LoA), from remote control to fully autonomous. The latter is not expected in the near or intermediate future for most systems. Thus, operation relies on the interaction between human and system. The Human-System Interaction in Autonomy (H-SIA) method aims to analyse autonomous system...

Humans play a crucial role in modern socio-technical systems. Rooted in reliability engineering, the discipline of Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) has been broadly applied in a variety of domains in order to understand, manage and prevent the potential for human errors. This paper investigates the existing literature pertaining to HRA and aims to...

Autonomous systems operation will in the foreseeable future rely on the interaction between software, hardware and humans. Efficient interaction and communication between these agents are crucial for safe operation. Conventional methods for hazard identification and safety assessment focus often on one of the aspects of the system only, e.g., human...

The oil industry has grown in terms of quantity of facilities and process complexity. However, human and material losses still occur due to major accidents, and many of which involve human failures. These failures can be identified, modeled and quantified through Human Reliability Analysis (HRA). The most advanced HRA methods have been developed an...

In March 2019 we organized the 1st International Workshop on Autonomous System Safety (#IWASS) in Trondheim, Norway. We gathered over 40 subject matter experts from academia and industry. For three days we discussed challenges concerning autonomous systems safety, and possible solutions. The proceedings of the 1st IWASS are now available (also at...

The First International Workshop on Autonomous Systems Safety (IWASS) was organized by the Department of Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). IWASS took place in Trondheim, Norway, from 11th to 13th...

The oil industry has grown in recent decades in terms of quantity of facilities and process complexity. However, human and material losses still occur due to major accidents at the facility. The analysis of these accidents reveals that many involve human failures that, if prevented, could avoid such accidents. These failures, in turn, can be identi...

IWASS is a workshop that aims to gather experts' views and recommendations on the path towards safe, reliable, and secure autonomous systems. This whitepaper provides a starting point concerning some of the topics that will be addressed at IWASS, including the current state of the art on autonomous systems development and challenges it faces.

The development of autonomous is driven by, among other factors, the possibility of reduction of accidents generated and/or aggravated by human error. Although autonomous ships imply less human interference in operation than regular ships, they will probably rely on human operators working onshore for supervision or remote control when necessary. T...

Recently, numerous organizations have made progress in developing autonomous ships, motivated by, among other factors, the potential for increased safety. This applies especially to accidents involving human error, as autonomous ships would remove operator role from all or most operations. The reality is that although the human role is reduced, aut...

Despite the oil industry's efforts in improving safety, it still presents a high rate of serious accidents, many involving human failure events (HFE), which can be identified, modelled, and quantified through human reliability analysis (HRA). The oil industry commonly analyzes process safety by focusing on technical barriers, and thus it could bene...

Despite the Oil Industry efforts in improving safety, it still presents a high rate of serious accidents, many involving human error. Human Failure Events (HFE) can be identified, modeled, and quantified through Human Reliability Analysis (HRA). The Oil Industry commonly analyzes process safety focusing on technical barriers, and therefore it could...

In recent decades, natural gas has been gaining importance in world energy scene and established itself as an important source of energy. One of the biggest obstacles to increase the usage of natural gas is its transportation, mostly done in its liquid form, LNG – Liquefied Natural Gas, and storage. It involves the liquefaction of natural gas, tran...

The QRA of relatively recent industries such as the Liquefied Natural gas (LNG) industry presents a difficulty in the frequency analysis step, because of the very sparse or even nonexistent failure data. The use of Bayesian Analysis can overcome this difficulty - it allows failure frequency calculation from more statistically reliable data from sim...

RESUMO O uso do Gás Natural Liquefeito – GNL tem aumentado consideravelmente nas últimas décadas, e com ele a quantidade de terminais de armazenamento e regaseificação. Por causa da natureza inflamável do metano, em caso de acidentes com vazamento de GNL esses terminais podem oferecer perigo às comunidades próximas a eles. Nesse contexto, é essenci...

In recent decades, natural gas has been gaining importance in world energy scene and established itself as an important source of energy. One of the biggest obstacles to increase the usage of natural gas is its transportation, mostly done in its liquid form, LNG – Liquefied Natural Gas, and storage. It involves the liquefaction of natural gas, tran...