Bridging Resilience Engineering and Human Reliability Analysis

Abstract

There has been strong interest in the new and emerging field called resilience engineering. This field has been quick to align itself with many existing safety disciplines, but it has also distanced itself from the field of human reliability analysis. To date, the discussion has been somewhat one-sided, with much discussion about the new insights afforded by resilience engineering. This paper presents an attempt to address resilience engineering from the perspective of human reliability analysis (HRA). It is argued that HRA shares much in common with resilience engineering and that, in fact, it can help strengthen nascent ideas in resilience engineering. This paper seeks to clarify and ultimately refute the arguments that have served to divide HRA and resilience engineering.