Alwin van Drongelen

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at Netherlands Aerospace Centre

Operator fatigue poses a major concern in safety-critical industries such as aviation, potentially increasing the chances of errors and accidents. To better understand this risk, there is a need for noninvasive objective measures of fatigue. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of cEEGrids, a type of ear-EEG, for fatigue detection by analyz...

Professionally realistic multi-task environments, such as the NASA Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB-II), are employed for measuring vigilance and attention in professionals. However, it is unclear whether well-known intervention effects on performance during simple lab-based tasks, such as those of caffeine, also translate to these more realistic...

This exploratory study has investigated the effects of cabin noise on passenger sleep length and quality, because the influence of cabin comfort and particularly cabin noise levels on sleep length and quality is not yet fully understood. Therefore, a feasibility study was conducted to explore the possibilities for a more extensive laboratory sleep...

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of glasses that emit blue light in reducing the need for recovery, general fatigue, and stress levels in security guards who work night shifts. Light manipulation is seen as a promising strategy to mitigate complaints related to shift work, such as sleepiness and impaired cognitive performance. In a ra...

Fatigue is an important factor in aviation accidents and incidents. Since fatigue cannot always be prevented, it needs to be detected in real time so that countermeasures can be taken. This study researches whether vocal changes (in vocal intensity and fundamental frequency) can be used as a measure for fatigue in an operational aviation setting. S...

ABSTRACT Background: Shift work can be demanding owing to disturbances in the biological and social rhythms. This can cause short-term negative effects in employees, such as increased fatigue and reduced alertness. A potential way to counteract these negative effects is to enhance employees’ recovery from work during working hours. Objective: The a...

BACKGROUND Shift work can be demanding owing to disturbances in the biological and social rhythms. This can cause short-term negative effects in employees, such as increased fatigue and reduced alertness. A potential way to counteract these negative effects is to enhance employees’ recovery from work during working hours. OBJECTIVE The aim of this...

Background: Shift work can be demanding due to disturbances of biological and social rhythms. This can cause short-term negative effects for employees, such as increased levels of fatigue and reduced alertness. A potential way to counteract these negative effects is to enhance employees' recovery from work during working hours. Objective: The ai...

Informal abstract: Both shift work and indoor daytime working restrict employees’ access to the natural light-dark cycle. Light-at-night and insufficient bright light in the daytime can disrupt circadian rhythms and sleep, and represent risk factors for serious diseases. As current guidelines concerning workplace lighting and shift work are based o...

Nederland kent een groeiend aantal flexwerkers. Dat maakt inzicht in welke flexwerkers een kwetsbare arbeidsmarktpositie hebben essentieel. Dit onderzoek beantwoordt de vraag in hoeverre persoonlijke factoren, werkkenmerken en het contracttype de uitstroom van flexwerkers naar een vast contract of naar een uitkeringssituatie beïnvloeden. Hiertoe is...

Background More insight into predictive factors is needed to identify employees at risk for future sickness absence. Companies register potentially relevant information regarding sickness absence in their human resources and work schedule administration. Aims To investigate which combination of administrative company data best predicts long-term a...

Background Exposure to shift work has been associated with negative health consequences, although the association between shift work and sickness absence remains unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate associations between cumulative exposure to shift work and sickness absence among ground staff employees of an airline company. Methods Th...

PurposeThe objective of this study is to determine risk factors for fatigue among airline pilots, taking into account person-, work-, health-, sleep-, and lifestyle-related characteristics. Methods The study population consisted of 502 pilots who participated in the MORE Energy study. Included risk factors were either measured through an online que...

BackgroundMORE Energy is a mobile health intervention which aims to reduce fatigue and improve health in airline pilots. The primary objective of this process evaluation was to assess the reach, dose delivered, compliance, fidelity, barriers and facilitators, and satisfaction of the intervention. The second objective was to investigate the associat...

Shift work research has shown that the relationship between exposure to irregular working times and sickness absence may differ between working populations. Not much is known about the prevalence of sickness absence in flight crews or about the relationship between exposure to different flight schedules and sickness absence in this population. To e...

Recent laboratory experiments on rodents have increased our understanding of circadian rhythm mechanisms. Typically, circadian biologists attempt to translate their laboratory-based findings to treatment of jet lag symptoms in humans. We aimed to scrutinise the strength of the various links in the translational pathway from animal model to human tr...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of an mHealth intervention (intervention using mobile technology) consisting of tailored advice regarding exposure to daylight, sleep, physical activity, and nutrition, and aiming to improve health-related behavior, thereby reducing sleep problems and fatigue and improving health percep...

Flight schedules of cabin crew involve early starts, long working hours, night flights, and the crossing of time zones, all of which might contribute to the risk of onboard occupational accidents. Because it is unclear if cumulative flight schedule exposure affects the incidence of occupational accidents, the objective of this study is to examine t...

Objectives Work schedules of cabin crew involve early starts, long working hours, night flights and the crossing of time zones. This can impose disturbed sleep, fatigue, lack of alertness, and possibly cause occupational accidents onboard. Although it has been shown that the risk for occupational accidents increases over successive shifts, it is un...

Background A considerable percentage of flight crew reports to be fatigued regularly. This is partly caused by irregular and long working hours and the crossing of time zones. It has been shown that persistent fatigue can lead to health problems, impaired performance during work, and a decreased work-private life balance. It is hypothesized that an...

Shift work is associated with a number of negative health outcomes, although it is not known whether it is associated with sick leave. This systematic review therefore aimed to determine whether an association exists between shift work and sick leave. A systematic literature search was conducted in six databases on observational studies. Two review...

This systematic review aims to summarize the available evidence to elucidate the effects of shift work, which includes night work, on body weight change. A systematic search strategy using longitudinal studies was performed. Articles were included based on strict inclusion criteria; methodological quality was assessed by a standardized quality chec...