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A Performance Monitoring Strategy to Enhance Human Consistency in Risk-Informed Decision-Making.

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Title: A Performance Monitoring Strategy to Enhance Human Consistency in Risk-Informed Decision-Making. The objective is to examine human risk-informed decision-making variability related to the Opera... Title: A Performance Monitoring Strategy to Enhance Human Consistency in Risk-Informed Decision-Making. The objective is to examine human risk-informed decision-making variability related to the Operating Power Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) and identify any insights that could enhance existing self-assessment and feedback processes. This idea was inspired by the book “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony”. This requirement shall be performed by people familiar with human decision analysis, particularly variability in decision-making. Given the plant-specific nature of many operational issues and ROP decisions, some level of variability in decision-outcomes is expected. Therefore, an initial objective of the research would be to develop a detailed research plan that would describe the analysis approach, sources of data, approach to analyze variability, and methods to determine if the level of decision-making variability was undesirable. This plan would also describe methods employed to anonymize specific decision data, ensure analysis objectivity, and minimize impact on NRC staff. NRC Staff-Level Working Group A small NRC staff-level working group, which represents different perspectives for the reactor oversight process, shall be formed to provide technical oversight and guidance for the project. The representatives shall have knowledge of the ROP processes, risk techniques, and a working level background in human decision-making sciences. Expected Products and Anticipated NRC Use By reviewing and evaluating past ROP risk-informed decisions using a different approach than is currently used during periodic self-assessments, this research effort is expected to identify potential enhancements to the existing self-assessment and feedback processes to help ensure consistency in human decision outcomes (e.g., reduce randomness, increase accuracy, and ensure transparency). The project may also identify potential mitigation strategies to enhance human risk-informed decision-making processes (e.g., best practices for risk communication to decision-makers, exercising ‘decision hygiene’).