**Prioritizing Human Factors in Emergency Conditions Using AHP Model and FMEA**

Fabio De Felice, Antonella Petrillo and Domenico Falcone

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/64411

#### **Abstract**

One of the most critical issues related to safety in industrial plant is to manage accidents that occur in industries. In general, the causes of accidents are twofold: the presence of dangerous equipment and human errors. The aim of this study is to propose a novel approach to ensure safety in emergency conditions in industrial plant considering both of these factors. The proposed idea aims to integrate the human reliability analysis (HRA) and the failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA). The human errors and failure modes are categorized using a multicriteria approach based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The final aim is to present a novel methodological approach based on AHP to prioritize actions to carry out in emergency conditions taking into account both qualitative and quantitative factors. A real case study is analyzed. The analysis allowed to identify possible failure modes connected with human error process.

**Keywords:** AHP, HRA, FMEA, emergency, human errors

#### **1. Introduction**

In recent years, various emergency events have caused loss of lives. The potential for major industrial accidents required a clearly and systematic approach to control the human errors and failure modes to ensure a proper approach in emergency conditions. One of the most impor‐ tant significant sources useful to monitor the emergency events is the database EM-DAT (http:// www.emdat.be/). The database is a potential tool to investigate industrial accidents and disaster events worldwide. For instance, **Figure 1** shows the total number of industrial accidents, in Europe, between 1900 and 2015. As it is possible to note, during the period 1990–2008, there has

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beenagrowthinthenumberofaccidents.This resultisnota surpriseasa consequenceofgrowth on industrial processes and technology.

**Figure 1.** The total number of industrial accidents between 1900 and 2015 (source "http://www.emdat.be/").

Of course, the growth of industrial accidents, highlighted above, behave in accordance with an increase of the total number of economic damage as it is shown in **Figure 2**.

**Figure 2.** The total economic damage between 1900 and 2015 (source http://www.emdat.be/).

Among the major disasters that occur worldwide are the *Seveso disaster in Italy* (July 1976), caused by the release of dioxins into the atmosphere; the *Chernobyl disaster* in Ukraine (April 1986) happened after a test on a reactor; the *Shell Oil refinery* explosion in the USA (May 1988), caused by hydrocarbon gas leak; and the *Fukushima I* nuclear accidents in Japan (March 2011).

These undesirable events increased the importance of risk assessment and a good operational planning decisions [1, 2]. In this context, the critical elements to take into account are human factors and failure modes to design a systematic approach to improve the role of human element in a system performance. Thus, *what is the point?* In our opinion, it is necessary to provide a structured framework to prioritize risks taking into account the failure mode and the human errors.

For this reason in the present research, an integrated approach is proposed. In particular, the approach is based on three fundamental aspects that, in our opinion, help to analyze the problem globally: the *human reliability analysis* (*HRA*), the *failure modes and effects analysis* (*FMEA*), and the multicriteria approach using *analytic hierarchy process* (*AHP*). Here below, a brief overview of the above approaches is provided.

beenagrowthinthenumberofaccidents.This resultisnotasurpriseasaconsequenceofgrowth

144 Applications and Theory of Analytic Hierarchy Process - Decision Making for Strategic Decisions

**Figure 1.** The total number of industrial accidents between 1900 and 2015 (source "http://www.emdat.be/").

an increase of the total number of economic damage as it is shown in **Figure 2**.

**Figure 2.** The total economic damage between 1900 and 2015 (source http://www.emdat.be/).

the human errors.

Of course, the growth of industrial accidents, highlighted above, behave in accordance with

Among the major disasters that occur worldwide are the *Seveso disaster in Italy* (July 1976), caused by the release of dioxins into the atmosphere; the *Chernobyl disaster* in Ukraine (April 1986) happened after a test on a reactor; the *Shell Oil refinery* explosion in the USA (May 1988), caused by hydrocarbon gas leak; and the *Fukushima I* nuclear accidents in Japan (March 2011). These undesirable events increased the importance of risk assessment and a good operational planning decisions [1, 2]. In this context, the critical elements to take into account are human factors and failure modes to design a systematic approach to improve the role of human element in a system performance. Thus, *what is the point?* In our opinion, it is necessary to provide a structured framework to prioritize risks taking into account the failure mode and

For this reason in the present research, an integrated approach is proposed. In particular, the approach is based on three fundamental aspects that, in our opinion, help to analyze the

on industrial processes and technology.

The HRA is a critical issue because the human errors involve the use of qualitative and quantitative aspects [3]. In literature, a great number of tools are proposed for human reliability analysis [4]. The limit of the HRA techniques is related to the uncertainty to consider organi‐ zational factors and errors of commission. One of the most important issues related to human errors is the performance shaping factors (PSFs). PSFs allow to assess all the environmental and behavioral factors that influence the decision and actions of man. In particular, the use of PSFs allows to simulate different scenarios. HRA tools include failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), developed in the late 1950s. FMEA is one of the most popular methods used to perform the risk assessment [5]. The traditional FMEA approach has been extensively criticized due to the limitations in calculating the risk priority number (RPN) [6, 7].

Several methods have been suggested to improve the traditional HRA and FMEA. Among these methods, the multicriteria methods such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) are very promising. AHP, developed by Saaty [8], is a useful approach to manage the complexity of decision problems. AHP technique is very suitable to determine the weights for each risk factor. With AHP, it is possible to evaluate the ambiguity of human perception and to transform it into a mathematical formula.

In this paper, the AHP technique is proposed to weigh and to prioritize failure modes and human factors that characterize actions in emergency conditions. AHP is used to assess the relative importance among human factors and failure modes. As a result, a new methodolog‐ ical approach to calculate the risk priority number using weighting method integrating with human factors is presented. To validate the application of the model and to examine its effectiveness, the proposed methodology is used for analyzing an emergency scenario in a petrochemical plant.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The literature review on emergency management is presented briefly in Section 2. The methods are introduced in Section 3. Section 4 is about the proposed evaluation methodology. Furthermore, a numerical example is presented. Conclusions are analyzed in Section 5.
