Risk assessment systematic errors

Chapter 5, Quantitative and Qualitative Prediction of Human Error in Safety Assessments, describes a systematic process for identifying and assessing the risks from human error, together with techniques for quantifying human error probabilities. 

Performance-influencing factors analysis is an important part of the human reliability aspects of risk assessment. It can be applied in two areas. The first of these is the qualitative prediction of possible errors that could have a major impact on plant or personnel safety. The second is the evaluation of the operational conditions under which tasks are performed. These conditions will have a major impact in determining the probability that a particular error will be committed, and hence need to be systematically assessed as part of the quantification process. This application of PIFs will be described in Chapters 4 and 5. 

This chapter has provided an overview of a recommended framework for the assessment of human error in chemical process risk assessments. The main emphasis has been on the importance of a systematic approach to the qualitative modeling of human error. This leads to the identification and possible reduction of the human sources of risk. This process is of considerable value in its own right, and does not necessarily have to be accompanied by the quantification of error probabilities. 

A simple process of considering how human error could trigger a hazard to materialise and, therefore, a risk to exist, will provide a systematic basis on which to identify safety related human error potential and then, as a natural progression of the risk assessment process, allow appropriate controls to be identified and implemented. 

When performing human reliability assessment in CPQRA, a qualitative analysis to specify the various ways in which human error can occur in the situation of interest is necessary as the first stage of the procedure. A comprehensive and systematic method is essential for this. If, for example, an error with critical consequences for the system is not identified, then the analysis may produce a spurious impression that the level of risk is acceptably low. Errors with less serious consequences, but with greater likelihood of occurrence, may also not be considered if the modeling approach is inadequate. In the usual approach to human reliability assessment, there is little assistance for the analyst with regard to searching for potential errors. Often, only omissions of actions in proceduralized task steps are considered. 

The design of aeronautics safety critical systems deals with two families of faults random faults of equipments and systematic faults in the development of the equipment, which include errors in the specification, design and coding of hardware and software. Two different approaches are used when assessing whether the risk associated with these two types of faults is acceptable. Qualitative requirements (minimal number of failures leading to a Failure Condition) and quantitative requirements (maximal probability of a Failure Condition occurrence) are associated with equipment faults whereas requirements stated in terms of Development Assurance Levels (DAL) are associated with development faults. 

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