Composite Hazard Analysis of System of Systems for Mixed-traffic Automation in Underground Mine

Hazard analysis for a single system focuses on identifying and evaluating potential hazards associated with the individual system, its components, and their interactions. There are well-established hazard analysis techniques that are widely used to identify hazards for single systems. However, unlike single systems, hazard analysis in a System of Systems (SoS) must focus on analyzing the potential hazards (including emergent ones) that can arise from the interactions between multiple individual systems. This type of analysis considers the complex interactions between systems and the interdependence between their components and the environment in which they operate. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the application scenarios of SoS and to employ a systematic approach to identify all potential hazards. This paper applies the Composite Hazard Analysis Technique (CompHAT) to an industrial case study from a mining and equipment domain. The results show that the CompHAT is useful in identifying the interaction faults and their propagation routes between components of a constituent system and between constituent systems in an SoS. We also report that, due to the tool support, CompHAT can be beneficial for safety engineers to trace the faults in the network of an SoS in a more efficient and effective manner.