Matlab-Stateflow for automated HAZOP

The principle of HAZOP analysis is to identify hazards arising in a plant due to deviations from the design intent or the normal behavior of the plant. A meaningful deviation is generated by coupling a guideword and a parameter and this is applied to cover all the possible deviations that could arise from the design and operation of the plant or the process in the node. HAZOP is normally done manually or using commercial software. Software is used both as a means of book keeping and also to generate plant operation modes. In this work, we present on the use of Matlab-Stateflow to perform automated HAZOP. This methodology aids safety professionals in automating most of the manual tasks, thus has potential to reduce the time required to perform a HAZOP study.