Reliability engineering applied to Critical Operations Power Systems (COPS)

At the request of the US Homeland Security Department in 2005 the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) developed the first leading practice criterion for building premises wiring in emergency management facilities. These criteria first appeared in the 2008 National Electrical Code (NEC) as a new section - Article 708: Critical Operations Power Systems (COPS). Article 708 establishes minimum design, commissioning and maintenance requirements for facilities with engineering documentation that identifies them as designated critical operations areas (DCOAs). One of the key features of Article 708 is the application of quantitative methods for assessing risk and conveying the results into a power system design that is scaled according to hazards present in any given emergency management district. These methods employ classical lumped parameter modeling of power chain architectures and can be applied to any type of critical facility, whether it is a stand-alone structure, or a portion of stand-alone structure, such as a police station or government center. This article will provide a risk assessment roadmap for a typical COPS facility that is most common - a “911” Call Center (the facility that takes and routes the 911 calls to the police or fire departments). The existing methods of reliability engineering will be used in the risk assessment.