Insights into Digital Risk and Compliance Management

Market Situation and Challenges: The demographic change is leading to an increasing shortage of skilled workers as experienced employees retire and are difficult to replace with equally qualified personnel. At the same time, new regulations, sustainability requirements, political influences, and fluctuating market conditions exacerbate the challenges for companies. In the future, companies will have to achieve more with less experienced personnel while always meeting compliance requirements and minimizing risks.

Solution Approach: To address these challenges, we have developed a concept based on automated assessment of system conditions with run-time risk determination and evaluation. This requires the integration of data from various sources, for example by combining current sensor data with experiential knowledge. An example which gains benefit of this combination is predictive maintenance, but also all other disciplines which have touch points with the daily safety life.

Key Method: A key method for addressing these challenges is the formalization of human hazard and risk language. This involves the digitalization of failure modes and hazards using a parameter- and rule-based approach. On this basis a risk engine is able to assess the current situation. In the future the risk engine will be replaced by a safety agent which can interact with the operator’s system of agents.

The problem with today's “digitalized” documents and their content, such as risk assessments, is that they contain leaps of thought or have an incomplete context. Today these gaps are usually filled by experts through their specialized knowledge and experience. The foundation of the approach with failure modes and formalized hazard and risk language functions as a link between the human thought process and the digital computable world and promises high-quality results when using agent systems.

Benefits: Through the digitalization of risk and compliance management, companies can generate added value in various areas and KPI. Data validation and verification are essential. By contextualizing the data, its trustworthiness can be ensured, ultimately allowing decision support for critical decisions involving human judgment.

With my presentation I will focus on the following technical topics:

• Formalization of human hazard and risk language
• Implementation of safety related aspects in digital twins and how to link e.g. to cyber security assessments
• Need of validation and verification of data
• Short report from other sectors which could be beneficial for process industry
• Example scenarios