The phenotype of erroneous actions

TLDR: A logical set of phenotypes is developed and compared with the established "human error" taxonomies as well as with the operational categories which have been developed in the field of human reliability analysis and the trade-off between precision and meaningfulness is discussed.

Abstract: The study of human actions with unwanted consequences, in this paper referred to as human erroneous actions, generally suffers from inadequate operational taxonomies. The main reason for this is the lack of a clear distinction between manifestations and causes. The failure to make this distinction is due to the reliance on subjective evidence which unavoidably mixes manifestations and causes. The paper proposes a clear distinction between the phenotypes (manifestations) and the genotypes (causes) of erroneous actions. A logical set of phenotypes is developed and compared with the established "human error" taxonomies as well as with the operational categories which have been developed in the field of human reliability analysis. The principles for applying the set of phenotypes as practical classification criteria are developed and described. A further illustration is given by the report of an action monitoring system (RESQ) which has been implemented as part of a larger set of operator support systems and which shows the viability of the concepts. The paper concludes by discussing the principal issues of error detection, in particular the trade-off between precision and meaningfulness.