Human reliability can be defined from several angles. As a scientific discipline, it means the study of human failures which views man as a fallible agent. It can then be used to assess the influences of human error on safety and productivity. In terms of human quality, it is defined, by analogy with technical reliability, to designate the ability of an individual to perform, successfully or without error, a set of functions required under given conditions and for a given time.
Published in Chapter:
Human Factors Affecting Railway Safety: Approach for Considering Human Errors in Investigations
Habib Hadj-Mabrouk (University Gustave Eiffel, France)
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 32
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-8040-0.ch004
Abstract
While the consideration of human factors in the railway feedback of experience (REX) process is becoming a new priority, the procedures are far from systematic, and the methodologies remain uncertain. Inspired in particular by the works of Reason and Rasmussen and supported by application examples from the field of railway safety, the human error analysis approach proposed to improve the level of safety of rail transport systems involves three complementary levels. Before the accident, the first level of “contextual analysis” makes it possible to study the various factors favouring the production of the human error at the origin of the accident. During the accident and in the face of a critical situation, the second level of “cognitive analysis” focuses on finding and examining the human errors involved in the human cognitive process. Finally, after the accident, the last level of “behavioural analysis” focuses on the evaluation of the consequences and damage caused to humans, to the system, and to their environment.