Abstract
Accident reports are intended to ensure that failures do not recur. They contain the analysis of many different experts, including human factors and systems engineers. The insights of these investigators are often separated into chapters that reflect the particular concerns and expertise of their authors. Such a separation often makes it difficult for readers to trace the ways in which human and system ‘failures’ combine to create the necessary conditions for an accident. The following paper argues that mathematically based modelling techniques can be used to overcome this problem. It is hypothesised that the application of formal notations can be extended from the domain of systems engineering in order to represent the findings of human factors analyses. In particular, it is argued that Petri Nets can be used to represent and reason about the concurrent behaviour of multiple operators and their systems. Tool support can be recruited to validate the resulting nets. The sequences of events leading to an accident can be simulated and shown to human factors and systems engineers. This, in turn, may elicit further observations about the causes of an accident. A near collision analysed by the U.K. Department of Transport’s Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) is used in order to evaluate this approach.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Air Accidents Investigations Branch. Report On The Incident Involving BAC 1–11 G-AYWB and Boeing 737 EI-BTZ On 12 April 1988 At Gatwick Airport, number 2/89, London, United Kingdom. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, (1989).
Air Accidents Investigations Branch. Report On The Accident To Boeing 737–400 G-OBME Near Kegworth, Leicestershire on 8th January 1989, number 4/90, London, United Kingdom. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, (1990).
Bastide, R. and Palanque, P. Petri net objects for the design, validation and Prototyping of user-driven interfaces. In D. Diaper, D. Gilmore, G. Cockton, and B. Shackel, editors, Human-Computer Interaction-INTERACT’90, pages 625–631. Elsevier Science Publications, North Holland, Netherlands, (1990).
Bignell, V. and Fortune, J. Understanding System Failure. Manchester University Press, Manchester, United Kingdom, (1991).
Van Biljon, W.R. Extending Petri nets for specifying man-machine dialogues. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 28 (4): 437–455, (1988).
Chiola, G. GreatSPN users’ manual. Technical report, Departmento di Informatica, University delgi Studi di Turino, Turino, Italy, (1987).
Chretienne, P. Timed Petri nets: A solution to the minimum-time-reachability problem between two states of a timed-event graph. Journal of Systems and Software, 6 (1–2): 95–101, (1986).
Cox, A.P. editor. Risk Analysis In The Process Industries: The Report Of The International Study Group On Risk Analysis. EFCE No. 45. The Institute Of Chemical Engineers, Rugby, United Kingdom, (1985).
Davies, K.R. Techniques for the identification and assessment of major accident hazards. In J. Burgoyne, editor, The Assessment And Control Of Major Hazards, pages 289–308. Pergamon Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, (1985).
Ellis, C.A. and Gibbs, S.J. Concurrency control in groupware systems. ACM SIGMOD Record, 18 (2): 399–407, (1989).
Hura, G.S. and Attwood, J.W. The use of Petri nets to analyse coherent fault trees. IEEE Transactions On Reliability, 37 (5): 469–473, (1988).
International Atomic Energy Agency and The Commission of the European Community. Critical Survey of Research On Human Factors And The Man-Machine Interaction, IAEA-SM-26B /29, Vienna, Austria, (1984).
Johnson, C.W. Applying temporal logic to support the specification and prototyping of concurrent multi-user interfaces. In D. Diaper and N. Hammond, editors, People And Computers VI: Usability Now, pages 145–156. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, (1991).
Johnson, C.W. Specifying and prototyping dynamic human-computer interfaces for stochastic applications. To appear in People And Computers VIII. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, (1993).
Johnson, C.W. Using Z To Support The Design Of Interactive, Safety-Critical Systems, BCS/IEE Software Engineering Journal, (10)2: 49–60, (1995).
Johnson, C.W. and Harrison, M.D. Declarative graphics and dynamic interaction. In F.H. Post and W. Barth, editors, EUROGRAPHICS ‘81, pages 195–207. Elsevier Science Publications, North Holland, Netherlands (1991).
Johnson, C.W. and Harrison, M.D. Using temporal logic to support the specification and prototyping of interactive control systems. International Journal Of Man-Machine Studies, 36: 357–385, (1992).
C.W. Johnson, J.C. McCarthy and P.C. Wright, Using A Formal Language To Support Natural Language In Accident Reports. Ergonomics, (38)6: 1265–1283, (1995).
Kletz, T.A. What Went Wrong? Case Histories Of Process Plant Disasters. Gulf, Houston, United States Of America, (1985).
Kramer, B. Introducing the GRASPIN specification language SEGRAS. Journal of Systems and Software, 15 (1): 17–31, (1991).
Kuhmann, W., Boucsein, W., Schaefer, F. and Alexander, J. Experimental investigation of psychophysiological stress-reactions induced by different system response times in human-computer interactions. Ergonomics, 30 (6): 933–943, (1987).
Marsan, M.A., Conte, G. and Balbo, G. A class of generalised stochastic Petri nets for the performance evaluation of multiprocessor systems. ACM Transactions On Computer Systems, 2 (2): 93–122, (1984).
Merlin, J.A. and Faber, D.J. Recoverability of communications protocols - implications of a theoretical study. IEEE Transactions On Communications, COM-24(9), (1976).
Peterson, J.L. Petri nets. Computing Surveys, 9(3):223–252, (1977).
President’s Task Force On Aircraft Crew Compliment. United States’ Government Report On Aircraft Crew Compliment, Washington DC, United States of America (1981).
Reason, J. Human Error. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, (1990).
Wagenaar, W.A. and Groeneweg, J. Accidents at sea: Multiple causes and impossible consequences. In E. Hollnagel, G. Mancini, and D.D. Woods, editors, Cognitive Engineering In Complex Dynamic Worlds, pages 133–144. Academic Press, London, United Kingdom (1988).
Watson, I.A. Review of human factors in reliability and risk assessment. In J. Burgoyne, editor, The Assessment And Control Of Major Hazards, pages 323–337. Pergamon Press, Oxford, United Kingdom (1985).
Worley, N. and Lewins, J., editors. The Chernobyl Accident And Its Implications For The United Kingdom - Report Number 19 Of The Watt Committee on Energy. Elsevier Applied Science, London, United Kingdom (1988).
Zuberek, W.M. Timed Petri nets and preliminary performance evaluation. In Proceedings Of The 7th Annual Symposium On Computer Architecture, pages 88–96. ACM and IEEE, New York, United States of America (1980).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Springer-Verlag/Wien
About this paper
Cite this paper
Johnson, C. (1995). The Application Of Petri Nets To Represent And Reason About Human Factors Problems During Accident Analyses. In: Palanque, P., Bastide, R. (eds) Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems ’95. Eurographics. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-9437-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-9437-9_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-211-82739-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-9437-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive