What is it about?
The Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA) is widely used in chemical process industries to design the process plant protection systems. This method considers an initiating event, namely a process mishap leading to catastrophic failures, then examines the requirements of independent protection devices to mitigate the risk. This methodology is applied to Covid transmission as an initiating event and then independent protection layers such as Social Distancing, Ventilation, face mask, hand hygiene and vaccination, to mitigate the fatality.
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Why is it important?
LOPA is a simplified semi analytical probabilistic method applied in design of emergency safety systems for the chemical process plants. This method has successfully been applied to process plant design for the last 25 years and with some modifications it can also be adapted to Covid transmission prevention.
Perspectives
The expected prospective benefits of this tool is to provide a measurement tool for the Covid Fatality Index which can be lowered by adjusting (or engineering) the degree of adherence to the virus transmission prevention rules. In effect, it gives an algorithm to adjust Social Distancing, Ventilation, Hand Hygiene, Face Mask and Vaccination safety protocols, in order to mitigate the Covid transmission.
Dr Ali Mokhber
University of Greenwich
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Application of layers of protection analysis to prevent coronavirus infection, Process Safety Progress, March 2022, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/prs.12362.
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