Layer Protection Analysis (LOPA) -Simplified Process Risk Assesment

AGENDA

LOPA is a simplified form of quantitative risk analysis that, by classifying the severity of consequences, identifying the frequency of occurrence of an initiating event and the probability of failure of independent safety barriers (or protection level), analyses and evaluates the risk of one or more accident scenarios. LOPA can be used in process development and design, process operability assessment, process change management and decommissioning.

LOPA was developed around the need to answer questions such as:

1. How secure are the adopted safety measures?
2. How many security barriers are required?
3. What risk reduction should each level of protection provide?

LOPA can help answer these questions without having to conduct a full, detailed quantitative risk analysis (QRA)