Human Factors in Functional Safety Assessment

Assessment of Human Interactions and Behaviour

Abstract

This paper provides a discussion on the physical and emotional factors which humans bring into the design, execution, and maintenance of a Functionally Safe System.  It aims to bring these elements together in a structured manner and suggests potential assessment criteria for use by practitioners in this field to allow the assessment of Human Factors into an IEC 61508 or related safety system, though no limitation is intended as the basic methods may be modified for other fields.  This paper does not go into specific applications, rather looks at a generic approach as a basis from which sector specific factors may be added.  This paper provides a basis for the building of Key Performance Indicators to baseline, measure, and compare differing elements in the Human Factor assessment against a suggested target for a given Systematic Capability level.  This is in the context of an audit-based assessment attempting to minimise the effect of bias on the process to bring the often-subjective elements into an objective and measurable format.