Process / pipelineerror-assessment

Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART)

The Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART), developed by Jeremy Williams in 1988 for the nuclear industry, is a structured method for assessing the probability of human error in safety-critical tasks and identifying error reduction strategies. Unlike scales that measure subjective experience (workload, situational awareness), HEART is an analytical tool combining expert judgment, task analysis, and empirical error rates to quantify task-specific error probability and guide human factors interventions in high-stakes operations.

Open in MethodMindSoonVideoSoon

Read the full method

Members only

Sign in with a free account to read this section.

Sign in

Sources

  1. Williams, J. C. (1988). A data-based method for assessing and reducing human error to improve operational performance. In IEEE Fourth Conference on Human Factors and Power Plants (pp. 436-450). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/HFPP.1988.27529

Related methods

Referenced by

ScholarGateHuman Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART)). Retrieved 2026-06-04 from https://scholargate.app/en/human-factors/human-error-assessment