There has been a substantial level of effort over the past several decades to understand the role of the human controller/operator in process control industry accidents. This work received a substantial impetus from the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in March 1979, which led to an increased focus on the role of the operator as a decision-maker within the process control system. In response to this focus, industry guidelines were developed to address human factors issues in control room design and plant maintainability, among other issues. During the same period that industry guidelines...
There has been a substantial level of effort over the past several decades to understand the role of the human controller/operator in process control industry accidents. This work received a substantial impetus from the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in March 1979, which led to an increased focus on the role of the operator as a decision-maker within the process control system. In response to this focus, industry guidelines were developed to address human factors issues in control room design and plant maintainability, among other issues. During the same period that industry guidelines were being developed in the nuclear industry, the human factors community made significant progress in developing theoretical models of the role of the operator in process control. Models that recognized the importance of operators’ cognitive capacities, tendencies, and errors provided additional analytic power in both reconstructing accidents and developing approaches toward new designs. Two alternative near-term research plans were identified, along with the required funds, industry resources, and time. Expected products resulting from two alternative research efforts were outlined. An immediate benefit to industry in supporting the outlined research would be implementation of the Human Factors Operational Review Procedure. This would allow operators to come into compliance with key aspects of the Pipeline Integrity Management rules. More specifically, this guideline would be responsive to the requirement to identify and evaluate preventive and mitigative measures to protect High Consequence Areas, including emergency procedures for responding to spills and ruptures. Human factors critically affect operators’ capability to detect and respond to spills, ruptures, and other emergency conditions; and the proposed guideline would directly support these requirements. More generally, it is anticipated that support of this research would result in significant improvement in operational safety, reliability, and efficiency.