Beyond human error taxonomies in assessment of risk in sociotechnical systems: a new paradigm with the EAST 'broken-links' approach.
Risk assessments in Sociotechnical Systems (STS) tend to be based on error taxonomies, yet the term 'human error' does not sit easily with STS theories and concepts. A new break-link approach was proposed as an alternative risk assessment paradigm to reveal the effect of information communication failures between agents and tasks on the entire STS. A case study of the training of a Royal Navy crew detecting a low flying Hawk (simulating a sea-skimming missile) is presented using EAST to model the Hawk-Frigate STS in terms of social, information and task networks. By breaking 19 social links and 12 task links, 137 potential risks were identified. Discoveries included revealing the effect of risk moving around the system; reducing the risks to the Hawk increased the risks to the Frigate. Future research should examine the effects of compounded information communication failures on STS performance. Practitioner Summary: The paper presents a step-by-step walk-through of EAST to show how it can be used for risk assessment in sociotechnical systems. The 'broken-links' method takes a systemic, rather than taxonomic, approach to identify information communication failures in social and task networks.
a Transportation Research Group, Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering and Science Unit, Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, Boldrewood innovation Campus , University of Southampton , Southampton , UK.
Neville A
NA
Stanton
b Human Factors Research Group , University of Nottingham , Nottingham , UK.
Catherine
C
Harvey
D003142:Communication; D006804:Ergonomics; D006801:Humans; D008328:Man-Machine Systems; D008889:Military Personnel; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis
EAST; Sociotechnical systems; analytical models; risk