David Sanders - Systems Engineering Research Group Anglesea Building Anglesea Road
Favour Ikwan - Systems Engineering Research
Giles Tewkesbury - Systems Engineering Research

The work presented in this paper was to investigate whether a new intelligent decision-making system could have provided analysis using data sets and predicted the Buncefield UK catastrophe before it occurred. The new intelligent decision-making system is presented. It incorporates reliability engineering tools with multicriteria decision-making methods and artificial intelligence techniques. An intelligent system that recognises increasing level(s) and draws awareness to the possibility of additional increases before unsafe levels are reached is used to analyse and make critical decisions. The aim was to ensure that the causal factors of failure of the Buncefield UK incidents were predicted, ranked and solutions proffered one at a time to ensure that failures with high priority and high probability of re-occurrence were addressed.

Decision Making, Artificial intelligence, Buncefield, Storage tank, risk prediction, Catastrophes