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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Denis Besnard, Dr David Greathead
Classically, humans have been perceived as a source of faults in systems. Modern ergonomic views are promoting a somewhat different idea according to which humans are a factor of safety in unexpected situations. The safety of a system cannot be achieved without taking into account these two sides of cognition which compose what is called cognitive flexibility. In this paper, we will consider the cases of a nuclear accident and a plane crash-landing where human cognitive flexibility has impacted on the final safety of the system. We aim to discuss the violations that humans have performed in these cases with the assumption that they do not always deteriorate system safety. The discussion gravitates around a core argument according to which violations per se do not inform on the safety impairments in a system. Some other dimensions have to be taken into account. Among these, we are of the opinion that the accuracy of the operators mental model plays a key role, allowing some violations to improve system safety in emergency situations.
Author(s): Besnard D, Greathead D
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title: Department of Computing Science Technical Report Series
Year: 2002
Pages: 16
Print publication date: 01/01/2002
Source Publication Date: 2002
Report Number: 776
Institution: Department of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne
URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/776.pdf
