Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Course Description

As new technology changes engineering practice and introduces almost unlimited complexity into our engineered systems, the potential for losses from unsafe operation of our systems must be addressed by engineers. Simply adding redundancy and increasing component reliability is no longer enough. The complexity required to achieve our goals is driving the need for the use of special engineering approaches to designing safety into our systems.

This class introduces students to modern concepts of system safety, including hazard analysis and design for safety and gives them the opportunity to apply these concepts in the design of a safety-critical system. Students also learn to analyze causality in accidents by studying important past accidents in a variety of industries and identifying the engineering and organizational flaws that led to these losses.

Textbook

Leveson, Nancy. Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety. MIT Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780262016629. [Preview with Google Books] (Online version)

Course Overview

1. Accident Analysis
   1. Understand goals and purpose
   2. Analyze a real accident report
   3. Apply a systems-theoretic accident analysis technique (i.e. CAST)
2. Traditional Safety Design
   1. Learn basic safety design principles
   2. Recommend additional design features
3. Hazard Analysis
   1. Understand goals and purpose
   2. Learn traditional methods (FMEA, FTA, HAZOP, PRA, Risk Matrices, etc.)
      1. Know strengths/limitations
      2. Apply them to systems designs
   3. Introduction to systems theory and a systems-theoretic accident model (i.e. STAMP)
   4. Learn and apply a systems-theoretic hazard analysis method (STPA)
4. Safety-driven design
5. Introduction to human factors, "new view" vs. "old view"
6. Operations and management considerations

Grading

Each homework assignment will be graded with a number 1–10 as follows:

• A: 8–10
• B: 6–7
• C: 4–5
• F: 1–3

Each of the 13 assignments will be weighted the same amount. Together the assignments will account for 50% of the final class grade. With 13 assignments, each assignment is worth about 3.8% of the final grade.

The exams and final project will account for the remaining 50% of the final grade.

Calendar