Human Factors and Accident reduction/mitigation
Owen DeLong
owen at delong.com
Thu Nov 5 14:20:25 UTC 2009
Regarding Reliability and Availability:
1. Reliability and Availability are related, but not identical.
2. Systemic availability is, generally, the result of the combination
of component
reliability, component redundancy, policies, procedures, and
discipline.
3. Policies, procedures, and discipline help to reduce and/or mitigate
accidents.
In terms of accidents and human factors:
1. Accidents cannot be eliminated, but, with proper procedures,
policies, and
disciplines, most can be eliminated or prevented.
2. Most accidents which cannot be eliminated can be mitigated, but,
doing so
often comes at a cost which exceeds the product of benefit and
likelihood.
We could learn a lot about this from Aviation. Nowhere in human
history has
more research, care, training, and discipline been applied to accident
prevention,
mitigation, and analysis as in aviation. A few examples:
NTSB investigations of EVERY US aircraft accident and published
findings.
NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System
When NTSB finds a design flaw in an aircraft at fault for an accident
there
is a process by which that error gets translated into an
Airworthiness Directive
forcing aircraft owners to have the flaw corrected to continue
operating the
aircraft.
When NTSB finds a training discrepancy, procedural problem, etc., there
is a process by which those discrepancies are addressed.through
training,
retraining, etc.
For example, after a couple of accidents related to microbursts, NTSB
and
FAA determined that all pilots should undergo training on windshear and
windshear avoidance, including microburts.
etc. (There are many more examples)
Owen
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