Operator awareness

Hazard states

The effect of a hazard depends on the operators awareness of it. Accordingly, we need to define two states of the hazard:

• Apparent hazards, of which the operators are aware, though they might fail to handle in time.  If the operators are aware of the hazard, they may try to cope with it, namely, to enforce the system to resume its normal situation .
• Latent hazards, which might result in an operational surprise. If the operators are not aware of the hazard, subsequent operation might violate the rules, ending up with an incidence .

Examples

Latent hazards are key factors in case studies:

• Torrey canyon. The ship captain was not aware of the hazard, due to the scenario mismatch
• TMI. The operators were not aware of the hazards due to the stuck valve, and due to the turning off of the backup cooling pumps.

Guidelines

  latent hazards should be detected and manifested early, before they materialize to incidences.

Related topic

Updated on 29 Mar 2017.