Risk Assessment: Tools, Techniques, and Their Applications

11.1 Introduction

A technique that has applicability to a wide range of risk assessments is the critical incident technique (CIT). Forms of the CIT have been in existence since the 1930s and were further developed by Colonel John C. Flanagan during World War II (1, 2). CIT is a set of procedures used for collecting direct observations of human behavior that have critical significance and meet methodically defined criteria. CIT aids in the development of specific failure pathways that can later be further developed into event, fault, or human reliability event trees. The following discusses CIT and presents examples of its use.