Human errors and structural failure probability

Predicting the influence of human errors on structural failure probability is the topic of this paper. There are two principal reasons for needing this information. First, if errors are present after the design of a structure is completed, as is generally the case, this will provide the engineer with a measure of what effect such errors will have on the structural safety. Second, this information is directly useful in the optimisation of quality assurance expenditures, which can effectively be used for controlling the probability of structural failure due to errors. Simplified probabilistic models are developed to integrate human errors into structural risk assessment. Numerical examples illustrate the sensitivity of structural safety to errors.