2. Issues of man: machine interaction

Commission for Europe and by the Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial

Technological inferiority, obsolescence, and depreciation of technological equipment and its usage under potentially hazardous conditions, low qualified, and undertrained operational personnel—all these can stipulate high probability of technogenic accidents and industrial disasters practically in all the branches of production. At the same time, it is well-known that remediation of consequences even of smaller accidents costs 30 times more expensive than

Solution of some particular issues related to safety of separate subsystems of a technogenic object does not result in its sufficient reliability as a whole and does not meet the contemporary

Thus, the modern society faces the need for a new methodological approach to ensuring comprehensive safety of a technogenic object and all its subsystems, which is the only ground

A contemporary technogenic object is a complex dynamic system being a combination of separate subsystems (that are different from each other by the elaboration level, energy type,

According to this, the first objective of assuring reliability of a technogenic object is an analysis of its structure, revealing critical areas most prone to emergences and identifying the direction

The literature review shows that the modern concept of reliability of technogenic objects is based on the theory of sociotechnical systems (STS); where, STS refers to a complex operating system including a human-operator as its integral part, and the main objective is optimal distribution

The analysis of accidence in the STS states that over 56% of accidents are caused by a human factor, and as for the STS of moving objects, their accidence index rises up to 70% including 80% of accidents caused by a human-operator (HO) working under tension, off-nominal

Consequently, as one of the most important STS subsystems HO in fact determines the quality of STS's functioning and restricts its performance, reliability, and effectiveness, and therefore, the problem of evaluation and assurance of HO reliability within STS is considered to be

An analysis of the HO's activity, evaluation of their reliability and a dynamic forecast of effectiveness of their vocational functions make it possible to assure a higher-level integration of a person with a technical or informational system, to implement a human-oriented design of newly developed STSs, and can predetermine the development of adaptive human-machine

According to this, the first objective of assuring STS's reliability is an analysis of its structure, revealing critical areas most prone to emergences and identifying the direction of the security

of functions between the operator and the device and their mutual complementation.

Accidents signed by 72 countries.

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requirements to safety.

of the security effort.

conditions, or time pressure.

important and currently central.

interfaces.

their prevention and preliminary mitigation of their risks.

for the desired effect in the scale of the whole industrial sector.

organizational system, etc.) and connections between them.

A significant number of research investigations are dedicated to the issue of man-machine interaction. Mostly, the emphasis is made on man-machine systems (MMS). The term manmachine system refers to a system that includes a human-operator, a machine, which they use for their work activity, and a working site environment. The operator's working site environment is a combination of physical, chemical, biological, and psychological factors that impact on the operator at their working site during their activity.

As for STS, we accept a wider definition of this term: systems of man-machine-environmentsociety-culture-nature interaction, Figure 1.

Therefore, in a broad sense of assuring comprehensive technogenic safety it is more appropriate to use the term STS, and from the point of view of assuring compatibility of a man and a technical system it is reasonable to use the concept of man-machine system.

HO refers to the personnel; Machine refers to technological equipment; Work environment refers to the space where they function; Technology refers to a combination of techniques used for modifying of a work object and including safety measures; External environment is everything beyond MMS that can affect the MMS's functioning and, in turn, may alter due to the MMS's functioning.

One of the system objects is a human-operator, and their involvement is determined by the following generally known factors:

• a person sets the purpose of functioning of both the control object and the operation system and controls them for attaining this purpose;

Figure 1. Scheme of sociotechnical systems.


Assurance of human-operator efficiency is a sophisticated problem. From the systematic point of view, an operator is a complex, dynamic, stochastic, nonlinear, nonsteady, and selforganizing open system. In this connection, we face a challenge of revealing informative parameters that can ensure accurate and confident evaluation of the system activity as a whole. Besides, we should take into consideration the diversity of STSs implying the diversity of operational activities.

The main advantages of a man and a machine over each other are generally known and can be expressed as the following formulas:


It is obvious that within a firmly standardized technological process the abilities of technical systems prevail over the abilities of a man that results in developing automatic control systems. Under conditions of ambiguity and incomplete information, as well as in critical situations, the abilities of a man prevail over the abilities of technical systems.

In general, most researchers admit the dominating role of the anthropocentric approach to a man and technical systems that can be opposed to the machine-centered- or technocentric-approach.

The reasonability of the anthropocentric approach is determined by changes of both qualitative and quantitative parameters of the man and machine activities. Thus, particularly, work of the contemporary human-operator in STS is marked by the increase in the number of control objects and their parameters, in the capacity of symbolic information, in the speed and elaboration of control processes, which raise demands for operators' accuracy and response rate, their responsibility for the results of their own actions. In this context, we can observe the increase of the memory span and speed-of-response with associative mentality and brain structure interaction giving a cumulative effect in the development of human intelligence.

Severization of requirements to human-operator efficiency resulted in new forms and technologies of personnel training [1, 2], in particular, the technology of the virtual and introduced realities [3], the technology of biomechanical and cognitive support for the operator [4, 5].

The review of research literature shows that a typical causal chain of technogenic accidents is the following sequence of prerequisite events: an error of a person, equipment failure and/or an external adverse impact, emerging of a hazard (an energy or substance flow) in an unexpected place and/or in a wrong time; absence or defects of the protective equipment intended for such cases and/or improper actions of people in such situation; expansion or impact of hazardous factors on unprotected equipment, people and/or environment; damage to human, material, or natural resources due to deterioration of their properties and/or integrity [6].

At the same time, accuracy of operator's actions depends on many factors [7]:

• due to a number of reasons STS cannot be absolutely reliable, therefore the operator's involvement is necessary for control, diagnostics, search for and trouble shooting.

• due to imperfection of our knowledge about all the STS processes the external environment may produce the situations, which are called algorithmically unsolvable.

Assurance of human-operator efficiency is a sophisticated problem. From the systematic point of view, an operator is a complex, dynamic, stochastic, nonlinear, nonsteady, and selforganizing open system. In this connection, we face a challenge of revealing informative parameters that can ensure accurate and confident evaluation of the system activity as a whole. Besides, we should take into consideration the diversity of STSs implying the diversity of

The main advantages of a man and a machine over each other are generally known and can be

• a man is capable to simultaneously perceive information both by separate analyzers and by their combination (sight, hearing, etc.), a man is capable to differentiate signals by their main and additional attributes; a man typically has a number of activity programs for consideration of attitudes and factors of the environment that can help fulfill operations under the conditions when it is difficult or impossible to predict the machine work; • a machine assures high-quality programmed operations and functioning under the con-

It is obvious that within a firmly standardized technological process the abilities of technical systems prevail over the abilities of a man that results in developing automatic control systems. Under conditions of ambiguity and incomplete information, as well as in critical situa-

In general, most researchers admit the dominating role of the anthropocentric approach to a man and technical systems that can be opposed to the machine-centered- or technocentric-approach. The reasonability of the anthropocentric approach is determined by changes of both qualitative and quantitative parameters of the man and machine activities. Thus, particularly, work of the contemporary human-operator in STS is marked by the increase in the number of control objects and their parameters, in the capacity of symbolic information, in the speed and elaboration of control processes, which raise demands for operators' accuracy and response rate, their responsibility for the results of their own actions. In this context, we can observe the increase of the memory span and speed-of-response with associative mentality and brain structure interaction giving a cumulative effect in the development of human intelligence.

Severization of requirements to human-operator efficiency resulted in new forms and technologies of personnel training [1, 2], in particular, the technology of the virtual and introduced realities [3], the technology of biomechanical and cognitive support for the operator [4, 5].

The review of research literature shows that a typical causal chain of technogenic accidents is the following sequence of prerequisite events: an error of a person, equipment failure and/or an external adverse impact, emerging of a hazard (an energy or substance flow) in an unexpected

tions, the abilities of a man prevail over the abilities of technical systems.

operational activities.

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expressed as the following formulas:

ditions that are impossible for a man.


According to the statistical analysis, the probability of operator's errors in working with elaborated technical equipment may be up to 0.15, while in working with simple devices from 0.01 to 0.05 [8].

As it was found out, principles of image formation of visual targets, a signal-to-noise ratio, and perceptive and functional complexity of images influence the effectiveness of object recognition [9, 10] and the effectiveness of operator' activities on the sensory level.

From the point of view of operator's actions, the process of decision-making is the most difficult issue, especially under conditions of imperfect information, critical situations, and tight time.

It is commonly believed that in critical situations an operator can respond using some standard procedures, or under ambiguous conditions using the procedures that include definition and development of action strategies. In such case, the probability of wrong decision-making under conditions of uncertainty is much higher [11].

The functional status of an operator makes a significant influence on proper decision-making, in particular, their stress level [12], and their emotional intelligence [13].

As it was found out, for the successful training and effective professional activity the operator should have professionally important qualities (PIQs) that are defined as physical, anatomic, physiological, psychic, and personal properties necessary for solution of their professional tasks. In this connection, numerous approaches to PIQ evaluation are developed, and they are based on testing and laboratory experiment methods and intended for simulation of an operator's activity.

At the same time, evaluation of the vocational aptitude is a sophisticated problem due to the incomplete and ambiguous information about the operator's vocational aptitude structure, complexity of formalization of the operator's activity, numerous cross-connections between PIQs and criteria of their selection.
