Modeling workers’ behavior: A human factors taxonomy and a fuzzy analysis in the case of industrial accidents

Abstract While ‘Industry 4.0’ drives for greater automation, human factors are still essential in certain domains, especially in industrial disaster management. Despite human factors are frequently cause of individual biases and errors, a systematic quantitative analysis of the correlation between them and the workers' response performance in case of an industrial disaster has never been conducted. The aim of the present study is twofold: to design an original human factors taxonomy, which encompasses all the industrial worker's cognitive capabilities, physical skills, and psychological attitudes; to establish a correlation between each factor and the workers' response performance in case of an industrial emergency. A Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) analysis has been conducted in collaboration with 44 subject matter experts by using an ad-hoc developed tool to investigate, in particular, two types of workers, the role of emergency manager and the emergency team member. Results reveal that the factors have not the same weight in determining the human response performance: cognitive and psychological aspects have a substantial influence on the emergency manager's response performance, while the emergency team member's response performance is more influenced by psychological and physical aspects. Relevance to industry Given the crucial role of cognitive, physical and psychological factors in modern human-centred industrial systems and especially in the field of industrial safety & security, this study represents a meticulous guide for safety specialists in the design of disaster management strategies, for recruiters and practitioners in the development of competency-based job descriptions and for new research works for the development of personality-gifted intelligent agents in industrial applications.

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