A compound methodology to assess the impact of human and organizational factors impact on the risk level of hazardous industrial plants

•A specific methodology relating HOFs to operators’ response time valuable to Risk Analysis Practitioners.•The methodology is based on a sensitivity analysis of nine CPCs “families” according to CREAM.•A series of pilot experiments has been performed in order to evaluate human performance.•A Virtual Environment (VE) reproducing the specific plant section and the Control Room was created.•One CPC at the time variation has been selected keeping the remaining eight in their nominal value.

This paper presents a compound methodology devised to relate Human and Organizational Factors (HOFs) to operators’ response time in critical operations within hazardous industrial plants. The methodology has been based on a sensitivity analysis of the nine “families” of the Common Performance Conditions (CPCs), as defined in the CREAM technique, in order to verify and rank their influence on the operators’ response time. To prove the methodology, a series of pilot experiments have been designed and performed so that human response is evaluated in a Virtual Environment (VE) reproducing the control room and a specific plant section. This environment enables the analyst controlling the simulation to perform the sensitivity analysis acting through a supervisory station and manipulating the control functions in order to vary each CPC rate around its nominal value. Experiments were run with the variation of one CPC at a time aiming at the detection and containment operation of a gas leakage in a pressure-reduction NG terminal. The whole case study has been run within the framework of the VIRTHUALIS EU project.