Since the early 1990s, considerable effort has been spent to understand wha
t is meant by an "error of commission" (EOC), to complement the traditional
notion of an "error of omission" (EOO). This paper argues that the EOO-EOC
dyad, as an artefact of the PSA event tree, is insufficient for human reli
ability analysis (HRA) for several reasons: (1) EOO-EOC fail to distinguish
between manifestation and cause; (2) EOO-EOC refer to classes of incorrect
actions rather than to specific instances; (3) there is no unique way of c
lassifying an event using EOO-EOC: (4) the set of error modes that cannot r
easonably be classified as EOO is too diverse to fit into any single catego
ry of its own. Since the use of EOO-EOC lends to serious problems for HRA,
an alternative is required. This can be found in the concept of error modes
, which has a long history in risk analysis. A specific system for error mo
de prediction was tested in a simulator experiment. The analysis of the res
ults showed that error modes could be qualitatively predicted with sufficie
nt accuracy (68% correct) to propose this method as a way to determine how
operator actions can fail in PSA-cum-HRA. Although this still leaves the th
orny issue of quantification, a consistent prediction of error modes provid
es a better starting point for determining probabilities than the EOO-EOC d
yad. It also opens a possibility for quantification methods where the influ
ence of the common performance conditions is prior to and more important th
an individual failure rates. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Al
l rights reserved.