MAS – Meaningful Human Control in autonomy/digitalization of safety critical systems

The Norwegian petroleum sector has a world class health, safety and environment level and has been in the forefront using a risk based regulatory regime based on collaboration between industry, regulators and the workforce. The MAS project is about the design of meaningful Human Control of digitalization in safety critical systems, looking at automation and remote operations. The project is initiated by the oil and gas industry in Norway and Canada, which have seen the need to focus on safety and human involvement, as digitalization is increasingly introduced in the industry. Digitalization may cause disasters if human factors (HF) are not considered during design and operation. To ensure a safe and efficient digitalization, there is a need to increase “meaningful human control”. By this we mean the ability of the system to provide the operators with relevant information and possibilities to control the operation during all conditions. The level of automation varies from human control to full autonomy. The results of MAS will provide design and operational guidelines that supports meaningful human control. The knowledge and methods developed can play an important role in technology qualification to be used in the oil and gas industry as well as other safety critical industries. The project supports a parallel project (Criop-Do) supported by the Canadian industry and the Research Council in Canada. MAS will provide a roadmap for a new wave of international collaborative, multidisciplinary research on risk, safety and HF within major industrial operations undergoing digital transformation. The project will build on substantial collaboration from industry, regulators and HF experts. Key activities are to learn from accidents and incidents in automated and remote operated systems; review safety challenges; review successful design; analyse current practices and structure standards; assess practice in use of CRIOP, and improve the CRIOP method.

The Norwegian petroleum sector has a world class safety level, and has been in the forefront of implementing new safe technology and focus on a risk based regulatory regime based on tri-party collaboration between industry, regulators and the workforce. The goal of the industry and regulators are that Norway should have the highest safety level in the world. The risk-based approach, focus on planning/design and the collaborative environment has succeeded in other areas too, such that Norway has the safest road transport in the world, WHO (2018). The safety perspective and the tri-party collaboration can give Norwegian industry a long term and strategic competitive advantage in other countries both related to technology but also related to regulation, methodology and human factors focus. The Deepwater Horizon Accident, the Boeing Max 737 disaster and the Helge Ingstad collision clearly demonstrates the need for meaningful human control of complex and partly automated operations. The aim of this project is to improve the safety level in the sector through the implementation of autonomy/digitalization from the perspective of user centred agile design, prioritizing sensemaking and meaningful human control in safety critical operations. This proposal is based on needs and initiative from the oil and gas industry in Norway, in addition to the wish for international collaboration from the Research Council in Canada, that has approved a relevant project in Canada – “Critical Intervention and Operability Analysis for Digital Ocean Operations (CRIOP-DO)”. The project is collaborating with the Human Factors in Control (HFC) network in Norway, with 800 experts from academia, consulting, industry and safety authorities.