Hazardous situations decision-making

PROTECT, as currently implemented for WMATA, relies on human-in-the-loop response and decision making, except for the initial automated camera response triggered by sensors. Verification of detection, performed by staff in the operational control center (alerted to do so by the sensor alarm), is a necessary first step before any responsive actions are taken. CB-EMIS has been developed as a situational awareness tool where all event and supplemental (such as data on hazardous chemicals) information can be accessed and displayed. CB-EMIS also provides estimates of threat agent dispersion, the location of hazardous areas, and predetermined response strategies. These functions provide important inputs to the response decision making. 

Of course, the sponsor faces a game of heads you win, tails I lose. It is conceivable that the results could be the other way around. Consider Table 15.2. Now StatXact (R) produces a lower confidence interval of 0.7064 and nowhere near the value of 0.75 requested. However, the control group rate is 0.9 and, for this rate, the odds ratio of 0.7064 produces a risk difference of 0.027. Similar situations arise with survival analysis where one may be interested regarding decision making in the difference in median or mean survival but the analysis delivers a hazard ratio. 

Requirements to achieve an acceptable risk level in the design process can usually be met without great cost if the decision-making occurs sufficiently upstream. When hazards and risks are not properly dealt with in the design process, and retrofitting to eliminate or control hazards is proposed later, the cost may be so great as to be prohibitive. The result may be a situation in which, subsequently, the risks are judged to be... 

Have budget constraints had a negative effect on safety decision making Has inadequate maintenance resulted in an accumulation of hazardous situations that have gone attended, (e.g.. Is the detection equipment adequate, maintained, and operable Are basic safety-related repairs unduly postponed )... 

Physical or operational hazardous situations observed during a safety audit should be viewed principally as indicators of inadequacies in the safety management processes that allowed them to exist. Assume that management takes corrective action to eliminate every hazardous situation noted in an audit report. Still, little will be gained if no change is made in the overall decision making to improve the management systems that allowed the hazardous situations to arise and continue. 

On any hazardous operating plant, any change of circumstances must be assessed carefully, including careful risk assessment, before action is taken. Staff must be clear about the limits of their decision-making responsibilities. Operations management needs to keep acutely aware of the overall plant situation ( situational awareness , as discussed elsewhere) while also remaining sufficiently detached that they can make calm decisions about the best way forward when circumstances change. This is a difficult balance to achieve in practice - it requires hands-on detachment , i.e., full awareness with critical faculties intact. 

Situational awareness refers to a persons knowledge of the situation as related to the evolving state of the event environment. Situation assessment during emergency response and recovery combines information about incident geography, topography, weather, hazard or hazard impact, and resource data. This assessment provides a foundation for decision making (Table 7.3). 

Surry s model focuses on human actions rather than errors and the positive contributions of the operators to safety by adequate handling of hazardous situations. Accidents occur when the demands from the environment to handle hazardous situations exceed the information-processing capacity of the human operator. The operator receives information, processes it, makes decisions and acts. The information thus has to pass through several filters , where there are possibilities of information loss or distortion. There are perceptual filters such as reduced eyesight or hearing or inadequate... 

DECISION-MAKING IN HAZARDOUS SITUATIONS EXPOSURE TO HAZARDS AND RISKTAKING BEHAVIOR... 

The question of whether the performance tendency results as a product of expectations and value or of probability and usefulness played a relatively important role in this connection. This question led to some stimulating numbers games (Edwards, 1968), but no conclusions could be arrived at this is no surprise, because if probability is not appropriate as a basis for decision-making in hazardous situations, the relative importance of incentives, measured in termsof expectations, cannot serve as a basis from which one can, in the usual manner, determine the intention of performance. The solution of this problem would be relatively simple if readiness to perform depended only on the evaluation of the consequences, as is, according to Jungermamnn (1982), the case for risk perception among lay persons. 

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