An empirical study of HRA methods - overall design and issues

A diversity of Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) methods are currently available to treat human performance in Probabilistic Risk Assessments (PRAs). This range of methods reflects traditional concerns with human-machine interfaces and with the basic feasibility of actions in PRA scenarios as well as the more recent attention paid to Errors of Commission and decision- making performance. Given the differences in the scope of the methods and their underlying models, there is a substantial interest in assessing HRA methods and ultimately in validating the approaches and models underlying these methods. A significant step in this direction is an international evaluation study of HRA methods, based on comparing the observed performance in simulator experiments with the outcomes predicted in HRA analyses. Its aim is to develop an empirically- based understanding of the performance, strengths, and weaknesses of the methods. This paper presents the overall methodology for this initial assessment study.