Use criticality to find important barriers
Which risk barriers are the most important? This question can be answered with barrier criticality. In this article we discuss why & how to approach barrier criticality as well as some challenges.
Topic
risk assessment
A collection of 5 issues
Why threats in bowties don't always lead to all consequences
In theory all threats in a bowtie diagram can cause the top event, and the top event can cause all consequences. But sometimes a threat can't lead to all consequences. Why is that and is it a problem?
The barrier maturity model
Many organisations have adopted the idea of barrier management in safety. Many are also searching for ways to take a next step. With the barrier maturity model you can determine where your organisation currently is and see which steps can be taken to mature to a higher level of barrier management.
An alternative to the hierarchy of control
The hierarchy of control is often used as a brainstorming tool to come up with effective controls (aka, barriers). It's good because it favours proactive interventions like eliminating a source of fuel over reactive interventions like putting out a fire. However sometimes it is misused as a formal classification tool.
Your bowtie is too generic
If I could give one piece of advice to a novice bowtie analyst, it would be to include more specific information. Most risk assessments are too generic at first. This is true not just for bowties. It happens in FMEA, HAZID and other methods as well. It's important to get