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.