Discussion

The ultimate goal of achieving safer plant operation has mobilized many researchers to find ways to achieve that. The approach in this book is through modeling the plant lifecycle using the concepts of incremental modeling and metamodeling. Initially, plant design model has been constructed (and can be automated from the CAD environment) in the object-oriented modeling environment in a central repository on the basis of UML. Other plant activities are represented on top of the plant design model (incrementally). For example plant operation model has been represented as associated with the different plant physical objects. The conceptual plant safety model has been designed to identify the ways and opportunities for safety aspects throughout the plant lifecycle to be represented in the plant model. Examples have been illustrated where safety restrictions are represented as safety constraints associated with the different plant model elements suing OCL scripts. Using this approach, safety can be inherited in the plant model, which can ensure safer plant lifecycle i.e. design and operation.