CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF A HUMAN ERROR TOLERANT INTERFACE FOR COMPLEX ENGINEERING SYSTEMS

Various surveys and compilations have led to the conclusion that “human error” is a primary cause of most major accidents in aviation, power production, and process control. This conclusion has led to a variety of efforts to reduce or possibly eliminate human error. While such efforts to reduce human error are important, they can, if taken to an extreme, be very short-sighted. A strategy that is more likely to be successful is one that tolerates the occurrence of errors, but avoids their consequences. Error tolerance can be achieved in three complementary ways: 1) feedback about current consequences, 2) feedback about future consequences, and 3) intelligent error monitoring. These approaches are complementary and can be viewed as providing “multiple lines of defense” relative to the consequences of human error. This paper elaborates on each of these approaches and then suggests how they might be integrated in terms of a human error tolerant interface for complex engineering systems. A conceptual design for such an interface is presented. Also, the practical implications and limitations of implementing this design are considered.