Human Factors Analysis of Operational Activities

Abstract

Investigation of major accidents shows that along with technical factors, human factors can influence operational activities as well. In spite of this, existing quantitative risk analysis are utilized broadly for technical safety systems. The purpose of thesis work is to emphasize on human factors and how it can influence operational activities and risk associated with the activities. For the sake of assessment of human factors influence on operational activities a model is proposed. The proposed model deals with barrier failures and finds out the basic events for the failure. Then it goes further down and analyzes the reasons for each basic event. Some risk influencing factors are identified which affect the basic events and for each risk influencing factors some indicators are identified as an influencing factor. Hot work has been selected as the work task to analyze and operational steps of hot work are identified to understand the risk associated with each work task or activity. After that, each of the work tasks is assessed for the hazardous event ignition and relevant RIFs are extracted. A few RIFs are selected from the identified RIFs and evaluated thoroughly to understand their impact in hot work. The intention of the author is to analyze the work task activities, risk on the task, possible barrier failure, the relation between the cause of failure and risk influencing factors as well as include some indicators to analyze the risk factors.