Safety Assessment and Risk-informed Design of Networked Control Systems

控制系统的老化和过时已经成为包括核电站在内的多个行业中越来越严重的问题。然而，公用事业公司和监管机构都对现有工程系统的任何变化持合理的怀疑态度，如果新技术可能危及公共安全的话。与此同时，控制领域的技术进步使现代控制系统的出现成为可能，如网络控制系统(NCS)。这些系统在许多方面都具有优势，如更大的灵活性和更少的维护。然而，在采用可靠性和安全问题来改造现有系统之前，必须充分解决这些问题。为了支持下一代核电厂和其他行业，还需要新的控制系统设计。 缺乏系统的网络控制系统可靠性和安全性评估方案，以及基于安全洞察的系统设计(风险知情设计)，为本研究方案开辟了独特的视角。短期目标有三个：1)为网络控制系统，特别是在安全关键的应用中，制定一个全面的可靠性和安全建模策略；2)根据新开发的模型进行可靠性和安全评估，以提取与风险相关的信息；以及3)基于从可靠性和安全评估中获得的见解，设计一个基准网络控制系统。未来五年的长期目标包括：1)促进下一代控制系统的开发和鉴定；2)在控制系统安全评估领域向决策监管机构提供技术投入。 通过这项研究计划，将建立一支由1名本科生研究助理、2名硕士研究生和2名博士生组成的研究团队。预计它们将在维持网络控制系统安全评估和风险知情设计方面的未来发展方面发挥重要作用。

Aging and obsolescence of control systems have emerged as a more and more serious problem in multiple industries, including Nuclear Power Plants (NPP). However, both the utilities and regulatory agencies maintain healthy skepticism on any changes of existing engineering systems, if there is a slight uncertainty that the new technology might endanger public safety. Meanwhile, technology advancement in the control field has enabled the emergence of modern control systems, such as Networked Control Systems (NCS). These systems are advantageous in many aspects, such as more flexibility and less maintenance. However, reliability and safety issues have to be adequately addressed before they can be adopted to retrofit existing systems. New design of control systems are also needed to support next generation NPP and other industries. Lack of a systematic reliability and safety assessment program for NCS and design of such systems based on safety insights (risk-informed design) open a unique angle for this research program. There are three short-term objectives: 1) Develop a comprehensive reliability and safety modeling strategy for NCS, especially in safety-critical applications; 2) Perform reliability and safety assessment based on the newly-developed model to extract risk-related information; and 3) Risk-informed design of a benchmark NCS based on insights from the reliability and safety assessment. The long-term objectives beyond the next five years include: 1) Contribute to the development and qualification of next-generation control systems; and 2) Provide technical inputs to policy-making regulatory bodies in the area of control system safety assessment. A research team that encompasses one undergraduate research assistant, two Master students and two Ph.D. students will be established through this research program. They are expected to play a major role in sustaining future development on safety assessment and risk-informed design of NCS.