Human Reliability Using the Fault Tree Analysis. A Case Study of a Military Accident Investigation

The work integrates the human error term in the broader concept of human performance analysis. The main issues associated with human error and human reliability are highlighted step by step, resulting from the review of literature, from the perspective of the relationship between risk and safety. To assess the risks arising from human error and to reduce vulnerability of work, methods derived from the probabilistic assessment of the work safety systems are used. To identify the risks caused by the human error, the authors propose the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) method. The paper reveals the way the method is used for identifying the critical subsystems for the functioning of a given system and analyzes how unwanted events and their causes arise and occur. Also, a case study that is investigated throuhg the FTA method and that consists in the analysis of an accident that occurred in Evangelos Florakis naval logistics base from Cyprus, is presented.