This paper tackles the difficult issues surrounding the impact of humans on corrosion failure. These issues are sensitive because people need to feel superior to machines. Criticism of human error always seems to point the finger of blame and discussion of Knowledge-Based Systems improving efficiencies is otlen taken to imply that humans will be replaced in employment by computers. There is a natural antagonism towards idl these ideas. However, efficiency improvements must be made and reducing the negative impact of people is a major way of achieving this goal. Models should be built upon reliable data but such data are notably hard to obtain. Therefore this paper discusses techniques for acquiring such data from the wealth of published material. Building upon the work of experts in human science, the paper begins the integration of new expertise into an emerging standard model of materials performance.
Keywords: Knowledge-Based System, human science, people factor, human error, materials performance, corrosion, data-mining