An Integrated Suite of Tools to support Human Factors Engineering
Human Factors Engineering (HFE) work for the nuclear industry imposes special demands on the practitioner in terms of the scope, complexity and safety requirements for humans in nuclear installations. Unfortunately HFE lags behind other engineering disciplines in the development and use of modern, powerful tools for the full range of analysis and design processes. HFE does not appear to be an attractive market for software and hardware developers and as a result, HFE practitioners usually have to rely on inefficient general-purpose tools like standard office software, or they have to use expensive special-purpose tools that offer only part of the solution they require and which also do not easily integrate with other tools. There have been attempts to develop generic software tools to support the HFE analyst and also to achieve some order and consistency in format and presentation. However, in spite of many years of development, very few tools have emerged that have achieved these goals. This would suggest the need for special tools, but existing commercial products have been found inadequate and to date not a single tool has been developed that adequately supports the special requirements of HFE work for the nuclear industry. This paper describes an integrated suite of generic as well as purpose-built tools that facilitate information solicitation, issues tracking, work domain analysis, functional requirements analysis, function allocation, operational sequence analysis, task analysis and development of HSI design requirements. In combination, this suite of tools supports the analytical as well as the representational aspects of key HFE activities primarily for new NPPs, including capturing information from subject matter experts and various source documents directly into the appropriate tool and then linking, analyzing and extending that information further to represent detailed functional and task information, and ultimately HSI design requirements. The paper also describes a tool developed especially for functional requirements analysis, function allocation, and task analysis.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1169228
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-14-32823
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: AN INTEGRATED SUITE OF TOOLS TO SUPPORT HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING,Charlotte, NC.,08/26/2014,08/26/2014
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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