Cognitive Bowties: A New Approach to Analyzing Human Factors in Process Control

Abstract

Effective process control requires good cognitive human factors to achieve safety and performance goals. These human factors include situation awareness tools, good communication and teamwork skills, and effective policies and procedures. Human factors analysts need to identify human factors in these tools, skills, and procedures, and ensure that they are effective. Cognitive bowties offer a new alternative approach to the abstraction hierarchy for identifying process control human factors that is simpler and more clearly points to the human factors that support key decisions in process control. Process control bowties have become a common tool in process control industries for analyzing systems in terms of hazards, threats that lead to those hazards, and barriers that prevent the threats from creating the hazards. Cognitive bowties focus on key decisions related to hazards and analyze those decisions in terms of the decision cycle (detect, interpret, decide, and act) and the cognitive human factors that affect them. First, the cognitive bowtie approach is described. Second, it is illustrated in depth in the context of deepwater drilling. Third, the cognitive bowtie approach is illustrated briefly in UAV control and military airspace monitoring to demonstrate its broad application. A primary limitation is that the approach applies only to hazard control.