Fort Hill Group developed an integrated technique for proactively assessing human performance risks associated with new or modified systems or procedures.
Fort Hill Group developed the Human and Organizational Safety Technique (HOST) in an effort to proactively examine concepts to identify and mitigate potential human performance risks and system-level contributing factors. Identifying potential human performance hazards during the early stages of concept development reduces implementation time, costs, and safety risks. HOST synthesizes elements from Human Error Safety Risks Assessment (HESRA), Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA), and other safety methods to provide stakeholders with a comprehensive system view of potential human performance risks. Identified risks are traced beyond their immediate consequences to identify the impacts to other related systems, actors, and system risks.
The HOST method first develops a model of a proposed change that depicts the impact of the change on the relationships among the human actors and the various systems. The resulting Human-System Interaction Models (HSIMs) provide a scalable model for examining design alternatives and interactions with other systems or changes. The HSIMs are then utilized to identify human performance and system hazards by assessing the interaction points and modes between the system and human operators. The various impacts of the human performance and system hazards are traced beyond the immediate consequences to develop a thorough risk picture of the potential hazards. Identified hazards are then prioritized based on the severity and likelihood of potential outcomes and by the ability of the operator to detect and recover from the hazard. The potential human performance and system risks are prioritized to form a comprehensive, traceable, and proactive human performance safety assessment plan. Building on that plan, targeted mitigation strategies are developed with the resulting output of the HOST assessment being an actionable list of mitigation strategies that target the causes and impacts of potential human performance and system hazards.
Impact
HOST has been applied to a variety of concepts included in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) modernization effort. The results have identified and developed design requirements that have directly influenced NextGen concept implementation. Additionally, human performance hazards identified by HOST have resulted in the generation of new research requirements aimed to mitigate identified hazards early in the concept design stage and acquisition management process.
