| Abstract |
Since the late 1950s Sandia National Laboratories has played a leadership role in the development of human reliability analysis (HRA) techniques for high-risk/consequence operations. The most recent of these is the Aviation Safety Human Reliability Analysis Method, (ASHRAM), which gets its basic theoretical underpinnings from an HRA method developed by Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, called ATHEANA (A Technique for Human Event Analysis). The underlying premise is that significant human errors occur as a result of a combination of plant conditions and certain human factors that trigger cognitive error mechanisms in personnel. The error mechanisms can lead to the execution of unsafe acts, such as bypassing engineered safety features. Due to the usefulness of the approach, and the Clinton administration's initiative to improve commercial airline safety, Sandia funded the initial development of ASHRAM. The result is a method that allows aviation researchers to analyze aviation accidents and incidents that involve human errors in ways that account for the operational context, crew expectations, training, airframe-related human-system interfaces, and crew resource management. ASHRAM is packaged in a brief, readable format, with step-by-step instructions, and with real-world examples so that it can be utilized by a variety of users, including researchers, modelers, analysts, trainers, and pilots. |
