Development of a Behaviorally Based Human Reliability Analysis Method

• Published in: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 1995-10, Vol.39 (15), p.1006-1010
• Main Authors: Blackman, Harold S., Byers, James C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1541-9312; 1071-1813; 2169-5067
• DOI: 10.1177/154193129503901509

Human reliability analysis (HRA) assesses the safety and risk significance of human tasks. This paper describes the development and testing of a behaviorally based human reliability analysis method. A general criticism of HRA methods is the inability to tie HRA methods back to first principles in human behavior. The method described here, developed for the accident sequence precursor (ASP) program of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), begins by first describing an information processing model of human behavior, and then using it to define a comprehensive list of factors that influence human performance. These psychological factors are then distilled into the practical and operational factors more commonly identified in nuclear power plant operation. Appropriate adjustments for level of detail are then made to the factors and a further model developed to evaluate the effect of dependency between human actions. The application of the method to the ASP models for two nuclear power plants is discussed.