Dependable Systems: Error Tolerance and Man-Machine Cooperation

Technological progress has modified dependability issues by making human errors more visible and critical. To cope with these errors an obvious approach is to insert protections in systems. However, these protections should not be applied locally, as we may run the risk of disrupting cooperation between the components (human, technical) of systems and weakening the overall avoidance of disasters. Within the framework of dependability, this paper tends to present issues on human error tolerant systems and to relate them to man-machine cooperation. Principles of cooperation for error tolerance are outlined.