title: A systems perspective of managing error recovery and tactical re-planning of operating teams in safety critical domains.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Research in human error has provided useful tools for designing procedures, training, and intelligent interfaces that trap errors at an early stage. However, this "error prevention" policy may not be entirely successful because human errors will inevitably occur. This requires that the error management process (e.g., detection, diagnosis and correction) must also be supported. Research has focused almost exclusively on error detection; little is known about error recovery, especially in the context of safety critical systems. The aim of this paper is to develop a research framework that integrates error recovery strategies employed by experienced practitioners in handling their own errors.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A control theoretic model of human performance was used to integrate error recovery strategies assembled from reviews of the literature, analyses of near misses from aviation and command & control domains, and observations of abnormal situations training at air traffic control facilities. The method of system dynamics has been used to analyze and compare error recovery strategies in terms of patterns of interaction, system affordances, and types of recovery plans. System dynamics offer a promising basis for studying the nature of error recovery management in the context of team interactions and system characteristics.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The proposed taxonomy of error recovery strategies can help human factors and safety experts to develop resilient system designs and training solutions for managing human errors in unforeseen situations; it may also help incident investigators to explore why people's actions and assessments were not corrected at the time.
authors.affiliation: Technical University of Crete, Dept. of Production Engineering and Management, Chania, Crete, GR 73100, Greece. konto@dpem.tuc.gr
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kontogiannis
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010934:Planning Techniques; D011340:Problem Solving; D017751:Safety Management; D013597:Systems Analysis