Enhancing Human Reliability Analysis through Visualization: First Steps

Over the last 15 years practitioners and researchers in the area of human factors and human reliability analysis (HRA) at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) have been developing improved methods and tools for performing HRAs. During this last year a major focus has been placed on applying visualization to enhance HRA processes and the communication of HRA results. The team has explored various metaphors, concepts, and has built some initial visualization prototypes. This paper is a summary of the project's progress to date with emphasis on the conceptual and theoretical development to date. Secondarily, the paper describes, briefly, some of the prototyping efforts.