Development of natural resources in harsh environments presents significant technical and logistical challenges. An industrial workshop on "safety and integrity management of operations in harsh environments" was organized by the safety and risk engineering group at Memorial University of Newfoundland to bring together industrial practitioners, regulatory authorities, and research and development institutions to identify the safety and integrity challenges in harsh environments, share experience, and develop a roadmap for desired solutions. This article summarizes the lessons learned from the workshop on safety issues in harsh environments. The workshop identified that there are safety challenges regarding construction and operation including a lack of detailed standards, optimization with respect to winterization, and data scarcity. The remoteness of operations in harsh environments is an additional challenge. Finally, human factors add another set of challenges that arise from the physical and psychological behavior of personnel in harsh and remote environments.

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Vast reserves in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions have attracted interest of the oil and gas industry. However, oil and gas development in harsh environments faces significant technical and logistical challenges. A workshop on "safety and integrity management of operations in harsh environments" was organized by the Safety and Risk Engineering Group at Memorial University of Newfoundland focusing on main aspects of asset integrity. The event featured representatives from industry, regulatory authorities, and research and development institutions. Participants shared experience and lessons learned, and together developed a roadmap for achieving desired solutions. This paper briefly reviews the lessons learned from the two-day workshop and shares recent developments and applications of risk-based approaches to degradation modeling, integrity assessment, and inspection and maintenance decision-making in harsh environments. The recently developed novel approach of risk-based winterization method is introduced. This approach helps to analyze how much winterization is sufficient to address local and regional weather loading considering operating envelop and criticality of the components or the system. A case study from the Arctic region is used for discussion.@en

Development of natural resources in harsh environments presents significant technical and logistical challenges. An industrial workshop on "safety and integrity management of operations in harsh environments" was organized by the safety and risk engineering group at Memorial University to bring together industrial practitioners, regulatory authorities, and research and development institutions to identify the safety and integrity challenges in harsh environments, share experience and develop a roadmap for desired solutions. This article summarizes the lessons learned from the workshop on safety issues in harsh environments. The workshop identified that there are safety challenges regarding construction and operation including a lack of detailed standards, optimization with respect to winterization, and data scarcity. The remoteness of operations in harsh environments is an additional challenge. Finally, the human factors add another set of challenges that arise from the physical and psychological behavior of plant personnel in harsh and remote environments.

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