Safety Frameworks for Emerging Technologies

Abstract

New and advancing technologies bring capabilities to current systems and tools expected to improve safety, efficiency, or impact within their respective domain. To ensure such emerging technologies are implemented as to not negatively disrupt a system but empower it, the new design is analyzed using any variety of methods. Unfortunately, most process industry and transportation accidents have a human error component, despite methods to predict when errors will occur based on the technology design. The prospect of anticipating human error traps becomes even more challenging for emerging technologies when implemented in a hybrid or mixed-generation system. Since human error remains a threat to system safety, this panel was convened to review existing and planned safety frameworks to evaluate the impact emergent technologies have on human behavior. Of special interest are techniques that predict when technology will lead to degraded human behavior leading to error (including vigilance decrement, poor failure detection, a lack of currency, automation complacency, etc.). Safety frameworks that can anticipate system states and provide robust, resilient human-system responses to novel situations are an essential part of future system design.