Development of an FAA-EUROCONTROL Technique for the Analysis of Human Error in ATM

Human error has been identified as a dominant risk factor in safety-oriented industries such as air traffic control (ATC). As the capacity and complexity of airspace continues to increase, and as ATC develops more advanced interfaces and computerised support technology, the importance of identifying the human factors leading to human error will increase, and the ability of traditional design practices alone to effectively mitigate human error will be strained. Therefore, appropriate methods for development of error tolerant systems are needed. This paper reports on the project to harmonise two methods for investigating the human factors behind human errors in air traffic safety systems. The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) is a human factors taxonomy originally developed for the US Navy for investigation of military aviation accidents and is currently being used by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to investigate civil aviation accidents. The Human Error in ATM Technique (HERA) is a method of human error identification developed by EUROCONTROL for the retrospective analysis of airspace incidents and for prospective diagnosis during ATM system development.