Publications

Assessment of HRA method predictions against operating crew performance: Part I: Study background, design and methodology

Liao, Huafei L.; Forester, John; Dang, Vinh N.; Bye, Andreas; Chang, Yung H.; Lois, Erasmia

This is the first in a series of three papers documenting two large-scale human reliability analysis (HRA) empirical studies – the International HRA Empirical Study and the US HRA Empirical Study. The two studies are the first major efforts in recent years to benchmark HRA methods by comparing HRA method predictions against actual operator performance in responding to accidents simulated on nuclear power plant (NPP) full-scale simulators. The studies aimed to gain knowledge and insights concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the studied HRA methods and the factors contributing to inter-analyst (or intra-method) variability. In addition, the studies also compared the results of the same HRA method applied by different analysis teams. This paper provides the background and motivation of the studies, the overall study design, the simulation scenarios and human failure events to be analyzed, and concluding remarks concerning lessons learned on benchmarking HRA methods with crew performance of scenarios on NPP simulators.