Coordinating human operators and computer agents for recovery-oriented computing

This paper examines the errors committed by human operators of large networks and systems. It proposes a formal procedure in which system defense mechanisms are used to improve the coordination between human operators and computer agents. Further, it discusses and compares the effectiveness of different types of system defense mechanisms by performing experiments with Web-based GUI screens. In the process, the paper offers definitions of human errors and proposes methods to quantify such errors. Our experimental results have shown that more layers of system defense can play a pivotal role in minimizing commonly encountered human errors.