Human factors impact on risk analysis of complex systems

Area of Science:

• Industrial Engineering
• Human Factors Engineering
• Risk Management

Background:

• Modern plants increasingly rely on automation, altering operator roles to supervision and shared decision-making.
• This shift elevates the importance of cognitive functions and organizational factors in risk analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore methods for integrating human factors into modern plant risk analysis.
• To address the challenges posed by the dynamic nature of human-machine interaction in reliability assessments.

Main Methods:

• Discussion of various techniques for incorporating human factors into risk analysis.
• Consideration of the evolving role of operators in automated systems.
• Focus on cognitive and organizational factors in human reliability assessment.

Main Results:

• Cognitive functions and organizational factors significantly impact risk analysis more than physical performance.
• Dynamic human-machine interaction presents complex data demands for reliability assessment.
• New evolutionary techniques are favored to meet diverse risk analysis objectives.

Conclusions:

• Human factors integration in risk analysis requires advanced techniques to account for automation and cognitive load.
• Effective risk analysis, safety management, and decision-making depend on understanding these evolving human roles.
• Techniques must adapt to support quantitative risk analysis, safety management, accident investigation, and risk-based regulations.