Challenges and Opportunities of Applying the Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Techniques for the Petrochemical Industry in China

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that human error is one of the significant reasons to trigger over half of the accidents. So far, dozens of HRA approaches have been published for qualitatively and quantitatively assessment to human error. However, most of the HRA techniques are sourcing from the nuclear industry, so people from the Chinese petrochemical industry may not be familiar with those nuclear industry-based HRA methods. Although we deem that HRA techniques could provide considerable benefits to safety management, directly using those methods in the petrochemical industry may cause some unexpected issues, since HRA is a relatively new idea to the petrochemical industry in China. Therefore, this study conducts a well-designed questionnaire survey to indicate the opportunities and challenges of the future HRA application in the petrochemical plants of China. This survey indicates the attitudes, opinions, and the potential barriers of practicing HRA methods in the petrochemical industry. The people involved in the questionnaire survey are all from the Chinese petrochemical industry, including management team and front-line operator.