Validation of Human Error Probabilities with Statistical Analysis of Misbehaviours

Abstract

There is a lot of methods, how to determine human error probability. The methods have been used to predict human error of high risk operation. The quantification of human error probability is based on having statistically relevant data of human tasks and the associated error rates, using of databases and call off the required values by expert estimation. The issue of assessing the reliability of operators includes, except of operator skills, many other impacts. They can be characterized by factors that are most commonly known as Performance Influencing Factors (PSF). PSF are the factors of working system that affect or could affect the performance of operators, their reliability, and their recovery from encountered error. For a very simple task, there are many possible results from each method, and one of the reasons is, that it is difficult to validate value of human error probability. But this problem can be solved with statistical analysis of misbehaviours of specific employees. Statistical approach allows validating the likelihood of human error (for specific employee) both in qualitative tasks (e.g. opening of valve) as well as quantitative tasks (e.g. error of reading the value from the measuring instrument in the process unit operation). This article aims to propose simple approaches for validation of human errors.