Efficiency Prediction of Control Room Operators

Based on Human Reliability Analysis and Dynamic

Decision-Making Style in the Process Industry
Esmaeil Zarei,a,b Iraj Mohammadfam,a Mostafa Mirzaei Aliabadi,a Ali Jamshidi,c and
Fakhradin Ghasemia
a
Department of Occupational Health and Safety Engineering, School of Public Health and Research Center for Health Sciences,
Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran; mohammadfam@umsha.ac.ir (for correspondence)
b
Student Research Center, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran
c
Railway Engineering Section, Delft University of Technology, Stevinweg, The Netherlands
Published online 14 September 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/prs.11782

Process industries have a potential for the occurrence of
major accidents. These accidents can have severe adverse
effects on human health and the environment and they can
cause extensive damage to equipment and buildings. During
major process upsets, central control rooms are among the
most stressful workplaces in the world. Therefore, Human
Reliability Analysis and Dynamic Decision-Making Styles
(DDMSs) play an important role in safety management in
these industries. This study employs the intelligent Adaptive
Neuro Fuzzy Inference System model associated with two
questionnaires along with Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis
Method to analyze the Human Reliability Influencing Factors
(HRIFs) and DDMSs of the control room operators and to
determine the efficiency of operators as well as their domi-
nant and efficient decision-making styles. Nine influencing
factors on human reliability and five DDMSs are evaluated
and the correlation between the HRIFs is investigated. Effi-
ciency of the operators, according to the HRIFs, is determined
and they are ranked. Next, the most dominant and efficient
of the DDMSs among the operators was identified. Finally,
an intelligent algorithm for determining the efficiency of a
control room’s operators is developed. VC 2015 American Institute
of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 35: 192–199, 2016
Keywords: human reliability analysis; decision making;
efficiency prediction; process industry
INTRODUCTION
The petrochemical industries must safely manage the
processing of hazardous materials or disastrous used during
process, potentially disastrous accidents can occur [1]. The
increasing scale of process plants handling ever-increasing
quantities of highly explosive and flammable materials cre-
ates the potential for large scale accidents if the facilities are
not properly designed and safely operated [2,3].
This work was supported by Student Research Center of Hamadan
University of Medical Sciences.
C 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers
V may lead to catastrophic events. The petrochemical
Statistical analysis of 489 major accidents from 1985 to
2001, in the European Union revealed that the petrochemical
industries ranked second (17%), after the general chemicals
(32%) in the number of accidents, and 70% of the major acci-
dents took place when the plants were in normal operation
status [4]. Analysis of 1,129 reported accidents in nine gas
refineries in Iran from 2001 to 2007, revealed that the more
than 94% of accidents had human error as one of the key
causal factors rather than systemic failure [5]; moreover,
results show that the human error is involved; in over 90%
of failures in the nuclear industry [4,6,7], over 80% of the fail-
ures in the chemical and petrochemical industries, over 75%
marine casualties [8,9], and over 70% of aviation accidents
[10]. Statistics mentioned shows that the causes of many acci-
dents in process industries, directly or indirectly were related
to human error. In addition, studies revealed that a signifi-
cant number of worker’s behaviors were unsafe, which is
one of the main causes of accidents in the process industry
[11]. Therefore, it can be concluded that the human reliabil-
ity, plays a major role in the safe performance of individual
and subsequently in the safe operation of the process indus-
tries [12]. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) is an analysis
technique based on human performance studies and consid-
ers many Human Reliability Influencing Factors (HRIFs) in
order to predict human performance in contributing to acci-
dents, error, and risk of tasks [13,14].
Dynamic Decision-Making Style (DDMS) is interdepend-
ent decision-making process that takes place in an environ-
ment that changes over time either due to the previous
actions of the decision maker or due to events that are out-
side the control of the decision maker [15,16]. There are a lot
of tasks in the control rooms of petrochemical industries
with such conditions [1] in which operators must gather
more information and are forced to take action at the same
time. Information obtained and decisions made are con-
stantly changing during their shiftwork. The accuracy of deci-
sions of the operators are crucially important in terms of
safety, because failure in their decisions may cause deviation
and flaws in the normal chemical operations and eventually

192 June 2016 Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.2)

Table 1. Some example of questions of HRIFs and DDMSs questionnaires.
HRIFs Questionnaire
1. Does the noise in the control Never
room makes you uncomfortable?
2. Do you have any pain or fatigue Never
in your eyes during the weekday?
3. How would you evaluate the No
current workload level?
4. Is it possible to adjust height of No
your work station for doing different
tasks and operations?
5. Are there situations where you have No
to violate safety rules due to working pressure?
DDMSs Questionnaire
1. Applying of creativity and innovation
2. Applying rules and regulations
3. Time pressure
4. Work pace
5. Need for planning
industries are developing with remarkable growth in Iran
and failures are expected consequences of the increasing
complexity of these industries. Parallel to the development
of the industries and the technologies and the use of reliable
systems and engineering designed, the reliance of such sys-
tems can cause biases and failures in decision making [17].
There are many studies that discuss the importance of
human factors and their impact on human reliability. How-
ever, to the best knowledge of the authors, there has been
no study conducted on human reliability and its relationship
with decision-making style in the petrochemical plants. This
study employs the intelligent Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Infer-
ence System (ANFIS) model associated with two question-
naires. ANFIS is a method based on a set of fuzzy IF–THEN
rules for membership functions that uses a hybrid learning
algorithm based on a collection of training data. Hence,
ANFIS is considered to be a universal estimator [18]. The
main objectives of this study were:
 Determining, measuring, and assessing of the HRIFs using
Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis Method along with a
self-administered questionnaire that including nine factors
as follow; (1) Risk Degree, (2) Physical and Mental Health
Status, (3) Communication, (4) Stress Factors, (5) Skill
Level, (6) Anthropometry, (7) Human Error, (8) Job Satis-
faction, and (9) Inherent Psychological Features (IPF).
 Survey and analysis the DDMSs of operators by Driver’s
questionnaire [19].
 Applying of the ANFIS to predict the efficiency of the
operators and their DDMSs according to the HRIFs.
METHOD AND MATERIALS
Setting and Participants
This cross-sectional study was performed on control
rooms in one of the largest petrochemical complex in Iran.
This complex consists of six large companies and each com-
pany has different units and several control rooms. In this
complex, all operators were male and the sample size was
62 operators who answered both the HRIFs and DDMSs
questionnaires. Table 1 shows some example of questions
about HRIFs and DDMSs questionnaires.
Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.2) Published on behalf of the AIChE
Response
Little Somewhat Very
Never Somewhat Very
Low Moderate High
Rarely Often Yes
Rarely Often Yes
Instruments
HRIFs
Data were collected via a self-administered questionnaire
about the HRIFs. The initial design of the questionnaire was
based on taxonomy of performance influencing factors for
HRA of emergency tasks [20]. A questionnaire of 40 items
was used in order to assess HRIFs in the present study. The
questionnaire uses a 1–4 scale, with most response points
labeled: 1 5 Yes, 2 5 Often, 3 5 Seldom, 4 5 Not at all. For
items related to satisfaction during shift work, 1 5 com-
pletely satisfied and 4 5 completely dissatisfied; for items
related to work load rate and psychological pressure (stress),
1 5 High and 4 5 Not at all.
Validity and Reliability Assessment of the Questionnaire
Validity. After design of the questionnaire, the face and
content validity was tested. Its validity was determined by
submitting the questionnaire to 15 operators and academics
and long-experienced industrial experts. The questionnaire
was then corrected and revised.
Reliability. In the present study, reliability analysis was
carried out by calculating the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient.
The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient evaluates the internal con-
sistency of the questionnaire. The alphas can range from 0 to
1.0, where 1.0 indicates perfect internal consistency. Internal
consistency measures how well all the questions on a scale
are correlated with each other, and high inter-item correla-
tions suggest that all the questions measure the same factor
of interest. Table 2 shows results of calculation of the
Cronbach’s Alpha values.
DDMSs
To assess DDMSs of the operators, the standard question-
naire of Driver was used [19]. This questionnaire measures
five DDMSs: (1) Decisive style, (2) Hierarchic style, (3) Sys-
temic style, (4) Flexible style, and (5) Integrative style. It con-
tains 17 factors: (1) Time pressure, (2) Excessive work load,
(3) Work pace, (4) Effectiveness on the system, (5) Prefer-
ence to use logical reasoning, (6) Applying creativity and
innovation, (7) Applying rules and regulations, (8) Lack of
DOI 10.1002/prs June 2016 193
Table 2. Cronbach’s alpha value of the questionnaire of the HRIFs.

0.71 0.79 0.79 0.63 0.64 0.71 0.62 0.79

Job satisfaction Communication Physical and Stress Skill Anthropometry Risk Total
mental health factor level degree Cronbach’s
alphas

Figure 1. Overview of the proposed intelligent algorithm. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available
at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]

familiarity with working rules and regulations, (9) The con-
trol limits, (10) Power rate, (11) Need for planning, (12)
Complexity of the inputs data, (13) Uncertainty, (14) Involve-
ment degree with others, (15) Need for reason and logic in
doing assignments, (16) Preference to use several methods,
and (17) Involvement of others.
The participants are asked to judge the degree of impor-
tance of each factor, relying on their experience in dealing
with the emergency situations. Degree of importance of each
factor is from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates the lowest and 7 indi-
cates the highest importance.
Finally, after the participants complete the questionnaires,
DDMS of the each person is determined according to ques-
tionnaire analysis guidelines. All statistical analysis was car-
ried out using SPSS 16 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) and MINITAB
at 5% significance level.
PROPOSED INTELLIGENT ANFIS ALGORITHM
The flow chart in Figure 1 shows the steps of the pro-
posed methodology.
The following sections describe the details of every step.
Input-Output Selection and Data Collection
ANFIS is used to estimate the HRIFs according to the deci-
sion-making styles. The inputs for ANFIS are the data col-
lected with the questionnaire survey and to ensure robust

194 June 2016 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.2)
Table 3. The frequency of demographic characteristics of control room operators.

Job Experience Education

(year) Degree Age (year) Height (m) Wight (kg)
Number (%) Groups Number (%) Groups Number (%) Groups Number (%) Groups Number (%) Groups
9 (15) 1–5 30 (48) Diploma 20 (32) 25–35 25 (40) 155–170 9 (15) 55–65
15 (24) 5–10 9 (15) Associate Degree 31 (50) 35–45 32 (52) 170–185 15 (24) 65–75
25 (40) 10–15 21 (34) Bachelor 11 (18) 45–55 5 (8) >185 23 (37) 75–85
10 (16) 15–20 2 (3) Master 10 (16) 85–100
3 (5) >20 5 (8) >100

Table 4. Frequency of dynamic decision-making style (DDMSs) of operators.

DDMSs H I H-I D I-F F-D F S

Frequency 30 14 10 2 3 2 3 0

H, Hierarchic; I, Integrative; D, Decisive; F, Flexible; S, Systematic.

and fair testing of the ANFIS, data were randomly divided

into two sets: train and test data, where 35% of the collected
data were chosen as the test data. To obtain the network
with the best quality of training and assessment, different
parameters including inference functions and radius influ-
ence of clustering are tuned. HRIFs are the outputs of the
ANFIS analysis.
Calculating the Efficiency Score
Adopting a comparative assessment strategy, the effi-
ciency of an operator can be interpreted as the difference
between each individual and the average expected perform-
ance of the group. The expected level of the performance is
determined by the trained ANFIS. Therefore, the difference
between actual performance and ANFIS output can be
served as an efficiency score (ES). To obtain the ESs of the
participants, error (Ei) between the actual outputs and ANFIS
outputs is calculated for all participants
Ei 5PrealðiÞ 2PANFISðiÞ i51; :::; n
where PrealðiÞ is the actual HRIF for participant i and PANFISðiÞ
is the estimate of HRIF for the participant i obtained from
ANFIS.
Then, normalizing by the reference value leads to
Ei0 5Ei =PðANFISÞ i i51; :::; n
where Ei0 is the relative error of participant i. Assume that
the participant k has the largest value of the Ei0 , thus we
have:
Ek0 5maxðEi0 Þ
Let us define transition size for each of the participant
(Shi) as follows:
Shi 5Ek  PðANFISÞi =PðANFISÞk i51; :::; n
Finally, calculating the ESs (Fi) is as follows:
Fi 5Pi =ðPðANFISÞi 1Shi Þ i51; :::; n (5)
Participants Ranking and Determine the Best DDMS
After calculation of ESs of the participants, they are
ranked based on their scores (Fi) and the best DDMS (Best is
the smallest difference between expected level of perform-
ance and actual performance) as determined among the effi-
cient participants. This style is compared with the dominant
style determined from DDMSs questionnaire and thus the
efficiency or inefficiency of dominant style can be
determined.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
DDMS and HRIFs Results
The characteristics of study population are shown in
Table 3. The mean age of study population was 38.52 years
(range: 27–54 years) and the most number of operators had
diploma degree 30 (48%) and their average job experience
(1) was 11 years (range: 3–23 years; Table 3).
DDMS of the operators was obtained by the questionnaire
of Driver and frequency of decision-making styles extracted
by means of descriptive statistics (Table 4). According to
Table 4, the hierarchical style is the dominant DDMS among
the operators. In case if the frequency of two styles is the
same, a combination of two styles may be considered as
dominant style. Systematic and Decisive styles had the lowest
(2) frequency (F 5 0, F 5 2, respectively) among all styles.
Among the combined styles, H-I (F 5 10) and F-D (F 5 2)
styles had highest and lowest frequency, respectively
(Table 4).
In the next step, average of HRIFs for all DDMS calcu-
lated and the dominant style based on influencing factors is
(3) determined. Table 5 shows the dominant DDMS relying on
HRIFs. In the hierarchical style, operator makes maximum
use of the data for adopting a single best response. As a
result, they had high skill level. Low focus and lack of plan-
ning are disadvantages of the flexible style [17]. As an illus-
(4) tration, in the present study for skill level and human error,
dominant styles were specified hierarchical and flexible
styles, that the results of present study confirm this (Table 5).

Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.2) Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs June 2016 195
Table 5. Dominant dynamic decision-making styles (DDMSs) according to HRIFs.

DDMSs I-F F F-D H F F-D I-F D I-F

HRIFs* Job Human Anthropometry Skill Stress IPF Communication Physical & Risk
satisfaction Error Level Factors Mental Health Degree
Status

*Human Reliability Influencing Factors.

Table 6. Significant relationships between HRIFs and

demographic characteristics.

Human Job Risk Skill

Error Satisfaction Degree level
Education 0.011 0.028
degree
Age 0.029 0.041
Job 0.034 0.026
experience

Table 7. Relationship and correlations between HRIFs.
Risk Human
Risk Degree and Error
Degree and Human and Stress
HRIFs Skill Level Error Factors
PCC* 0.85 0.89 0.79
P-Value 0.022 0.023 0.021
*Pearson Correlation Coefficients.
Table 6 shows significant relationships between HRIFs
and demographic characteristics. The statistical analyses were
conducted with the Kruskal–Wallis test and results indicate
that education degree variable have a significant relationship
with human error (P 5 0.011) and job satisfaction
(P 5 0.028), age variable have a significant relationship with
risk degree (P 5 0.029) and skill level (P 5 0.041), job experi-
ence have a significant relationship with job satisfaction
(P 5 0.034) and skill level (P 5 0.026). The relationship
between HRIFs and other demographic characteristics of
operators were not significant (P > 0.05).
The relationship and correlation between the HRIFs by
means of Kruskal–Wallis test and Pearson Correlation Coeffi-
cients (PCC) were investigated (Table 7). The results indicate
that there is significant relationship between factors of risk
degree and skill level, risk degree and human error, human
error and stress factors, skill level and human error (P <
0.05). The PCC and P-values between these factors are
shown in Table 7. The strongest relationship is related to risk
degree and human error.
ANFIS Result
Input and Output Variables for the ANFIS Tool in Algorithm
In the present study, based on closeness and similarity
rate of the factors and also to avoid of the scattering and bet-
ter understand the results, the 17 factors influencing the
DDMS were classified into six categories using Factor Analy-
sis Method and expert opinions that consists of 13 academics
Figure 2. .Minimum MAPE obtained from ANFIS training for
the operators. [Color figure can be viewed in the online
Human issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
Error
and Skill
Level
and long experienced industrial experts. These categories
0.88 were considered as input variables (IV). In addition, nine
0.031 factors influencing the HRA were considered as output varia-
bles (OV). Factor analysis results reveal the following inputs:
 Input variable 1: Effectiveness on the system, Preference
to use logical reasoning, Applying of creativity and inno-
vation, Applying rules and regulations.
 Input variable 2: Time pressure, Excessive workload,
Work pace.
 Input variable 3: Lack of familiarity with working and the
rules and regulations, Control limits, Power rate, Need for
planning.
 Input variable 4: Complexity of the inputs (data), Uncer-
tainty, Involvement degree with others
 Input variable 5: Need for reason and logic in doing
assignments
 Input variable 6: Preference to use several methods,
Involvement of others
In the training phase, in general, 24 overall structures of
ANFIS are considered for each of OVs. Since the parameter
of effectiveness clustering possessing a value between (1,
0.1), to get the lowest relative error, this numerical range
searched at steps of 0.1. Generally for each of the 24 overall
structures of the proposed ANFIS, 819 runs were done and
at the end, the best structure of the ANFIS, which had the
lowest Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), was chosen.
The results of ANFIS training error is shows in Figure 2.
ES of Operators
By implementation of the ANFIS for each nine OVs, a
numerical value is obtained for each operator. According to
the mentioned method for calculation of operators’ ESs in
the previous section, by having an output and the output
obtained from ANFIS and follow-up the mentioned steps,
numerical value of the ESs are calculated (Table 8).

196 June 2016 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.2)
Table 8. Efficiency values of operators obtained from ANFIS according to output variables (OV).

Operator N DDMS OV1 OV2 OV3 OV4 OV5 OV6 OV7 OV8 OV9
1 H 1.00 0.71 0.46 0.49 0.42 0.54 0.58 0.71 0.59
2 H 1.00 0.66 0.56 0.46 0.43 0.68 0.58 0.82 0.37
3 H 1.00 0.69 0.45 0.49 0.64 0.65 0.41 0.83 0.51
4 H 1.00 0.70 0.59 0.50 0.52 0.70 0.74 0.71 0.56
5 H 1.00 0.66 0.59 0.55 0.51 0.64 0.74 0.71 0.56
6 H 1.00 0.72 0.52 0.53 0.71 0.64 0.59 0.71 0.65
7 H 1.00 0.76 0.54 0.42 0.65 0.74 0.58 0.71 0.69
8 H 1.00 0.66 0.64 0.51 0.74 0.89 0.73 0.72 0.56
9 H 1.00 0.69 0.50 0.51 0.51 0.75 0.41 0.83 0.63
10 H 1.00 0.72 0.50 0.54 0.51 0.65 0.58 0.55 0.70
11 H 1.00 0.67 0.50 0.46 0.68 0.64 0.74 0.55 0.63
12 H 1.00 0.68 0.68 0.52 0.58 0.70 0.57 0.55 0.71
13 H 1.00 0.54 0.58 0.59 0.50 0.75 0.58 0.83 0.56
14 H 1.00 0.69 0.50 0.53 0.40 0.68 0.58 0.55 0.56
15 H 1.00 0.63 0.54 0.53 0.70 0.73 0.59 0.83 0.61
16 H 1.00 0.67 0.54 0.43 0.63 0.73 0.58 0.79 0.56
17 H 1.00 0.63 0.37 0.52 0.50 0.63 0.40 0.83 0.62
18 H 1.00 0.71 0.54 0.44 0.57 0.68 0.58 0.55 0.63
19 H 1.00 0.65 0.55 0.46 0.51 0.68 0.58 0.55 0.47
20 H 1.00 0.55 0.49 0.69 0.51 0.56 0.73 0.79 0.61
21 H 1.00 0.48 0.44 0.47 0.57 0.58 0.58 0.71 0.56
22 H 1.00 0.47 0.44 0.48 0.57 0.61 0.58 0.72 0.56
23 H 1.00 0.57 0.54 0.53 0.39 0.63 0.41 0.71 0.63
24 H 1.00 0.55 0.61 0.45 0.57 0.46 0.58 0.55 0.51
25 H 1.00 0.67 0.57 0.45 0.67 0.69 0.57 0.73 0.62
26 H 1.00 0.60 0.49 0.53 0.56 0.59 0.74 0.56 0.56
27 H 1.00 0.75 0.49 0.53 0.57 0.62 0.58 0.72 0.68
28 H 1.00 0.59 0.58 0.57 0.56 0.70 0.58 0.56 0.62
29 H 1.00 0.58 0.53 0.51 0.39 0.65 0.59 0.72 0.46
30 H 1.00 0.62 0.53 0.45 0.56 0.73 0.59 0.84 0.69
31 I 1.00 0.72 0.60 0.53 0.56 0.71 0.74 0.56 0.70
32 I 1.00 0.75 0.57 0.52 0.56 0.91 0.41 0.84 0.72
33 I 1.00 0.72 0.48 0.57 0.38 0.71 0.42 0.72 0.38
34 I 1.00 0.68 0.52 0.46 0.65 0.74 0.59 0.56 0.64
35 I 1.00 0.73 0.61 0.62 0.55 0.72 0.59 0.57 0.68
36 I 1.00 0.63 0.43 0.47 0.61 0.56 0.59 0.72 0.66
37 I 1.00 0.76 0.53 0.54 0.38 0.75 0.42 0.84 0.63
38 I 1.00 0.78 0.62 0.50 0.48 0.80 0.74 0.56 0.68
39 I 1.00 0.61 0.42 0.47 0.47 0.64 0.74 0.84 0.56
40 I 1.00 0.64 0.48 0.48 0.38 0.62 0.59 0.56 0.47
41 I 1.00 0.73 0.59 0.63 0.55 0.76 0.68 0.72 0.60
42 I 1.00 0.49 0.52 0.53 0.47 0.64 0.59 0.80 0.63
43 I 1.00 0.66 0.48 0.54 0.72 0.70 0.74 0.80 0.63
44 I 1.00 0.69 0.51 0.61 0.54 0.79 0.59 0.56 0.72
45 H-I 1.00 0.75 0.51 0.33 0.46 0.68 0.59 0.72 0.63
46 H-I 1.00 0.54 0.47 0.54 0.48 0.73 0.59 0.72 0.64
47 H-I 1.00 0.69 0.52 0.49 0.48 0.67 0.59 0.72 0.67
48 H-I 1.00 0.59 0.34 0.53 0.37 0.81 0.59 0.84 0.66
49 H-I 1.00 0.56 0.55 0.61 0.67 0.76 0.75 0.80 0.57
50 H-I 1.00 0.64 0.51 0.64 0.54 0.76 0.74 0.56 0.56
51 H-I 1.00 0.71 0.46 0.57 0.46 0.74 0.68 0.72 0.57
52 H-I 1.00 0.56 0.46 0.32 0.36 0.46 0.42 0.57 0.57
53 H-I 1.00 0.74 0.55 0.53 0.54 0.79 0.59 0.72 0.60
54 H-I 1.00 0.70 0.46 0.48 0.36 0.55 0.59 0.84 0.61
55 F 1.00 0.69 0.55 0.57 0.37 0.69 0.74 0.57 0.64
56 F 1.00 0.65 0.50 0.53 0.45 0.71 0.58 0.73 0.57
57 F 0.50 0.53 0.41 0.86 0.83 0.55 0.52 0.71 0.85
58 I-F 1.00 1.00 0.26 0.59 0.69 1.00 1.00 0.35 0.68
59 I-F 1.00 0.44 0.63 0.45 0.59 0.49 0.26 0.43 0.80
60 I-F 0.59 1.00 0.78 0.58 1.00 0.86 0.57 0.69 0.69
61 F-D 0.67 0.38 0.53 0.43 0.44 0.66 0.51 1.00 0.70
62 D 0.69 0.86 0.86 0.47 0.76 0.39 0.51 0.40 1.00

DDMS, dynamic decision-making style;

OV1, risk degree; OV2, physical and mental health; OV3, communication; OV4, inherent psychological features (IPF); OV5,
stress factor; OV6, skill level; OV7, anthropometry; OV8, human error; OV9, job satisfaction.
 Figure 3 shows total efficiencies obtained from ANFIS for
each operator, accordingly, ESs of the first 30 operators,
those who had hierarchical style were more than the other
operators. Thus, they had the best performance among all
studied operators.
Operator 26 (ES 5 0.74, Style 5 H) and operator 52 (ES
5 0.51, Style 5 H-I) had the highest and lowest ESs, respec-
tively. These findings will help to other operators who had
lower degree of efficiency, to push their decision-making
style toward the first 30 operators, those who had hierarchi-
cal style and subsequently the best performance.
In the following, the influence of the DDMSs on each of
the OVs is investigated. Average efficiency of operators in
lieu of each of OVs is shown in Table 9. According to the
results, the DDMSs had the highest influence on the OV1
(Risk degree, AE 5 0.98) and lowest influence on the OV5
(Stress factor, AE 5 0.51).
Operators Ranking
In this step, after calculation of ESs of the operator in
each OV, the rank of each operator among all the OVs
Figure 3. Total efficiencies obtained from ANFIS for each
operator. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
Table 9. Average efficiency of the operators for each of the output variables (HRIFs).
Output Variables OV1 OV2 OV3
Average Efficiency 0.98 0.65 0.52
Figure 4. Total ranking of operators obtained from ANFIS. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available
at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
198 June 2016 Published on behalf of the AIChE
using ANFIS is found. Then, with the sum of scores of peo-
ple in the OVs, total rank of each operator was determined.
Total operator rankings obtained from ANFIS are shown in
Figure 4.
According to the results, dominant DDMS based on maxi-
mum efficiency was the hierarchical style (OVs). Prevailing
style that was specified in the previous step (Standard ques-
tionnaire of Driver) was hierarchical style that is consistent
with ANFIS results.
CONCLUSION
Petrochemical plants are considered as one of the
mother industries because they can play a major role in the
economic progress of any country. In these plants, human
error is recognized as the main cause of accidents. There-
fore, achieving a higher efficiency and reducing risk of such
hazardous systems, to a considerable extent, depends on
the level of human reliability. Hence, understanding the fac-
tors that affect human reliability is a major concern.
The present study proposes an intelligent algorithm to
analyze the HRIFs and DDMSs. In the first step, through the
standard questionnaire of Driver the hierarchical style was
determined as the prevailing style of operator decision mak-
ing. In the next step, efficiency operator was calculated by
ANFIS method and they were ranked based on ES. The
results of both techniques showed that the dominant style of
the operators of control rooms is hierarchical. In addition,
DDMS had the highest and lowest influence on risk degree
and stress factor, respectively.
The first 30 operators, those who had hierarchical style,
had the best performance among all studied operators.
Therefore, it is better that other operators be encouraged to
adopt this decision-making style during doing their tasks and
operations.
Since often operations that have been carried out in con-
trol rooms of the petrochemical industry are similar to each
other, so the findings of the present study can be general-
ized and used in other petrochemical industries in
everywhere.
OV4 OV5 OV6 OV7 OV8 OV9
0.69 0.51 0.54 0.68 0.61 0.62
DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress (Vol.35, No.2)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors announce no conflicts of interest. The authors are
grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions from the
respected reviewers. Their valuable comments and suggestions
have enhanced the strength and significance of our article.
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