Oil and gas facilities used in the petroleum industry can be considered as complex dynamic systems in that they require different types of equipment with various causal relationships among components and process variables under monitoring. As the systems grow increasingly large, high speed, automated and intelligent, the nonlinear relations among these process variables and their effects on accidents are to be fully understood for both system reliability and safety assurance. Failures that occur during the process can both cause tremendous loss to the petroleum industry and compromise product quality and affect the environment. Therefore, failures should be detected as soon as possible, and the root causes need to be identified so that corrections can be made in time to avoid further loss, which relate to the safety prognostic technology.
By investigation of the relationship of accident causing factors in complex systems, new progress into diagnosis and prognostic technology from international research institutions is reviewed, and research highlights from China University of Petroleum (Beijing) in this area are also presented. By analyzing the present domestic and overseas research situations, the current problems and future directions in the fundamental research and engineering applications are proposed.