Human & Organizational Factors impact on risk level in an NG treatment and storage plant

The VIRTHUALIS project (Virtual Reality and Human factors Applications for Improving Safety) is a European Research Project on Industrial Safety. It aims at producing an innovative technology that integrates Virtual Reality and the most advanced Human & Organizational Factors concepts to improve safety in production plants and storage sites, by addressing end-users’ practical safety issues regarding safety analysis (Risk Assessment and Accident Investigation), Training, and Operational Safety Management. A specific Case Study has been designed in order to relate Human and Organizational Factors to operators’ response time—considered as the measure of the potential consequences magnitude—on the detection and containment of a gas leakage in a section of a pressure-reduction Station. Specifically, a sensitivity analysis on Common Performance Conditions (CPCs)—divided into nine “families”, as defined in CREAM methodology—in order to verify and to rank their influence on the operator response time, has been performed. A Virtual Environment reproducing the plant section and the Control Room has been designed allowing the safety analyst—controlling the simulation via a Supervisor station—to perform the sensitivity analysis. Control functions and strategies allowing the analyst—via the supervisor station—to manipulate (i.e., either improve or worsen) each CPC’s rate around nominal value inside the Virtual Environment, have been also designed and agreed. Experiments were run with a variation of one CPC at time and holding all the other eight on their nominal value.