Safety of the Water Supply System from the System Operator Perspective

The collective water supply system (CWSS) belongs to the critical infrastructure systems, being at the same time an anthropotechnical system, i.e. a system consisting of mutually interacting man—technical object—environment. Ensuring an appropriate level of reliability and safety of water supply to consumers is one of the current problems of the water supply sector. Specialist literature indicates that 70–90% of failures of technical systems are related to the impact of the human factor. In the case of the CWSS, it is estimated that man is responsible for 75% of the occurring failures. The influence of the human factor in the assessment of the reliability of the CWSS cannot be omitted. The paper presents the role of the operator in the CWSS, indicates the types of human errors and their causes. A review of the human reliability assessment (HRA) methods was made and the perspective of using the HRA methods in the analysis of the reliability and safety of the CWSS was presented.