Human Error Assessment and Decision Making Using AHP Technique

A brief review of common human error assessment methods is presented highlighting the requirements and steps of each method. This is followed by an introduction to the Analytical Hierarchy Processing (AHP) method to aid decision-making. An approach to integrate human error assessment and decision-making using the AHP method is described. The aim of this approach is to reduce the occurrence probability and severity of human error during the operational phase of a fishing vessel. It utilises AHP theory to rank the impacts of human error and further integrates the available control options (to minimise these errors) within the analysis. The result obtained from the analysis reflects the most favoured control option that will address all the possible human errors within the system to a satisfactory level. A test case, which considers the shooting operation of a beam trawler, is used to demonstrate the described approach. Each step involved in the shooting operation is assessed for its vulnerability to human error with respect to the equipment being operated and this captures the operator-machine interaction.  

Keywords:

AHP , Decision Making , Human error , human error assessment