Modeling and triggering safety barriers. At least some of the illustrative embodiments are a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium includes executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to model, using one or more models, safety barriers in one or more drilling rigs based on drilling rig safety barrier data. The processors are further caused to identify, based on the one or more models, a first impending invalidation of a first safety barrier. The processors are further caused to initialize, triggered solely by the instructions, a second safety barrier based on the impending invalidation.