A Hazard Causation Analysis Method for Battery Electric Vehicles based on STPA and Complex Network

Hazard causation analysis is of the essence in ensuring the safe operation of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). From such analysis, potential hazardous factors can be revealed so as to contribute to improving safety design of BEVs. In this paper, a quantitative hazard causation analysis method is proposed. The system-theoretic process analysis is employed to identify the potential causes of hazards in the proposed method. Furthermore, some evaluation indicators are designed, adapting to the features of the causal relationships of BEVs’ hazardous factors. The proposed method is applied to a study case of BEVs. The results show that the proposed hazard causation analysis method is effective in capturing the key hazardous factors and contributes to improving the safety design of BEVs.