Human Reliability Analysis: Context and Control

The prevalence of human erroneous actions as the major cause of accidents in man-machine systems has created a need for better descriptions of human performance, both for accident analysis and system design purposes. Models and methods are therefore required to assess human reliability, identify potential erroneous actions, and specify ways of preventing them from happening. This book discusses how modelling of cognition is applied to the analysis of human reliability and performance in complex technical domains. It provides a critique of existing approaches to modelling of cognition, and offers an alternative which recognises that the control of human actions is determined by the context as well as cognitive functions. This approach produces an improved qualitative analysis of human performance as a basis for later quantitative reliability assessment. Human Reliability Analysis will be essential reading for practitioners of human reliability analysis as well as students of cognitive psychology and ergonomics at advanced undergraduate and graduate level. Computers and People Series: this series is concerned with all aspects of person-computer relationships, including interaction, interfacing, modelling and artificial intelligence. The volumes are interdisciplinary, communicating results derived in one area of study to workers in another. Applied, experimental, theoretical and tutorial studies are included.