An Organizational Resilience-Based Human Factors Safety Method

Abstract

Major accidents still occur in industry. Accidents often emerge from unexpected circumstances and the outcomes are often dependent on human decision making. At present there does not appear to be a human factors method that helps industry practitioners create designs that enhance successful human control in unexpected circumstances. In this article we propose a human factors method that may fulfil this need. The method has been designed (1) to help industry practitioners identify control strategies that operators might use to manage unexpected situations and (2) to offer design insights that could promote control strategies that lead to more resilient system outcomes. We have called the method Strategies Analysis for Enhancing Resilience (SAfER). Results from initial user trials with industry practitioners show that the SAfER method has promise, but that further work is needed to refine it.