Selection Methodology of Risk Assessment Techniques for Electromagnetic Resilience

The growing use of electrical and electronic technologies has intensified the electromagnetic environment at the same time as new technologies tend to be more susceptible to electromagnetic interference (EMI). This is a major concern for the application of electrical and electronic equipment in safety-related systems since faults and malfunctioning caused by EMI can affect human and environmental safety. In this context, the achievement of functional safety regarding electromagnetic disturbances, known as electromagnetic resilience, is mandatory to prevent the occurrence of incidents and accidents. The process to reach electromagnetic resilience is based on many steps, in which the risk assessment is one of high importance. Although many risk assessment techniques have been studied and general rules for their selection have been developed, little effort has been done to establish a method to evaluate the suitability of risk assessment techniques for electromagnetic resilience. This paper introduces a proposal for a framework to select risk assessment techniques suitable for electromagnetic resilience. The definition of criteria is based on the literature research concerning the fundamental difficulties encountered in the electromagnetic resilience field. The formulation of the selection problem and the comparison analysis between the selected risk assessment are performed using the Analytical Network Process (ANP) method. To illustrate the methodology, it is performed an application comparing two well-known risk assessment methods: failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and failure tree analysis (FTA).