Identifying human failure events for human reliability analysis: A review of gaps and research opportunities

The human failure event (HFE) is the element of interest for human reliability analysis (HRA). However, the process of identifying and characterizing HFEs varies significantly between HRA methods, limiting the compatibility and traceability of results. To identify specific areas where this could be rectified, a literature review was conducted to assess the current state of research regarding the identification and underlying definitions of HFEs and their components. Current methods for identifying HFEs and their qualitative analysis are reviewed, as well as recently standardized terminology describing the breakdown of an HFE. Significant advances have been made in characterizing HFEs through macrocognitive functions, and the incorporation of HFE scenarios into larger probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) analyses. Several gaps and opportunities were found, with the most pressing issue being the dearth of HRA methods with both robust HFE characterization and quantification accuracy. Also identified was the lack of scientific basis for current complex, cognitively-based models. Other challenges include the complexity of human cognition, the various failure mechanisms that manifest in crew failure modes, the wide variety of failure scenarios (including ex-control room actions), and treatment of errors of commission. Many of these gaps are currently being pursued by interdisciplinary teams, but there is a significant amount of work to be done to address these shortcomings. •Current state of literature on HFE identification and characterization is presented.•Identified opportunity for robust, usable HFE characterization and quantification.•Need for expanding scientific and reliability engineering basis of HRA models.•Opportunity to expand HFE characterization to additional failure domains, scenarios.