USING SYSTEM SIMULATION TO MODEL THE IMPACT OF HUMAN ERROR IN A MARITIME SYSTEM

Human error is cited as the predominant cause of transportation accide nts. This paper describes the modeling of human error related accident event sequences in a risk assessment of maritime oil transportation i n Prince William Sound, Alaska. The risk analysts were confronted with incomplete and misleading data that made it difficult to use theoreti cal frameworks, They were required, therefore, to make significant mod eling assumptions in order to produce valid and useful results. A two stage human error framwork was developed for the Prince William Sound Risk Assessment based on interviews with maritime experts. Conditional probabilities implied by this framework were elicited from system exp erts (tanker masters, mates, engineers, and state pilots) and used wit hin a dynamic simulation to produce the risk analysis base case result s discussed. The ability to quantify the effectiveness of proposed ris k reduction interventions aimed at reducing human and organizational e rror were limited by the level of detail described by the taxonomy of human error. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.