Abstract
Dependency, specifically defined as the degree to which one erroneous action can impact subsequent actions, has been a fixture in many human reliability analysis (HRA) methods for the better part of forty years. Its incipience in the Technique for Human Error-Rate Prediction (THERP) was supported, seemingly, by examination of observed phenomena, but the documented evidence and link to proven psychological theories were absent. While HRA is typically a quantitative effort with qualitative inputs, we should be careful to ensure that HRA methods respect their psychological foundations lest the models constructed fail to measure the characteristics of human error accurately and sufficiently for the assessment of safety critical applications. This paper seeks to refocus attention on a foundational question in HRA—is dependence in a chain of human erroneous actions such that ‘error begets error’ a real phenomenon? Research is still needed to validate the construct and quantification of dependency.
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This work of authorship was prepared as an account of work sponsored by Idaho National Laboratory (under Contract DE-AC07-05ID14517), an agency of the U.S. Government. Neither the U.S. Government, nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights.
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Mortenson, T., Boring, R. (2021). Is Dependency in Human Reliability Analysis a Real Phenomenon? Refining the Dependency Concept Through Research. In: Arezes, P.M., Boring, R.L. (eds) Advances in Safety Management and Human Performance. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 262. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80288-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80288-2_7
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