CONTEXT AND HUMAN RELIABILITY-ANALYSIS

Unfinished business related to human reliability assessment includes the identification and specification of cognitive (diagnostic and decision making) error potential and context. This relates to the so-called NRC commission error issue and is a recognized omission from the recent efforts in IPEs. By reviewing notable instances of cognitive errors or near misses, by carefully characterizing the environment and situations in which such errors will arise and by borrowing on a scattering of partial techniques, a systematic approach to cognitive context can be developed. This paper takes a stab at gathering the various pieces and suggesting how such a method might proceed.