Risk Evaluation for Human Factors of Flight Dispatcher Based on the Hesitant Fuzzy TOPSIS-DEMATEL-ISM Approach: A Case Study in Sichuan Airlines

Abstract

To effectively mitigate unsafe events and accident symptoms stemming from flight dispatchers’ human factors, this paper proposes a novel risk evaluation model to accurately identify and evaluate potential human risks associated with flight dispatchers. First, the HFACS (Human Factors Analysis and Classification System, HFACS) model is employed to construct a human risk assessment indicator system for flight dispatchers. Second, the hesitant fuzzy set is introduced to represent the uncertainty during experts’ evaluation, and the improved TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution, TOPSIS) method is applied within a hesitant fuzzy environment to obtain rankings of human factors. Third, the hesitant fuzzy DEMATEL (Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, DEMATEL)-ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling, ISM) approach is constructed to analyze the correlation among human factors, leading to the establishment of a multi-level hierarchical structure model. Finally, a case study of risk assessment for human factors of flight dispatchers in Sichuan Airlines is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results revealed the flight dispatchers’ human factors associated with higher risks and identified the key factors with a larger impact on other factors in Sichuan Airlines. Subsequently, a multi-level hierarchical structure model comprising five layers is developed to investigate the internal correlations among human factors, facilitating the formulation of targeted improvement suggestions for the higher risk indicators and key influencing factors.