Laura M.D. Maguire

The Ohio State University | OSU · Department of Integrated Systems Engineering

The cognitive work of making sense of risk in avalanche forecasting is an under explored area in the field. This study examines the formal descriptions of how work is conducted in a Canadian ski operation and the ‘as practiced' cognitive strategies employed by expert practitioners to success-fully manage avalanche hazards in practice within a compl...

Controlling coordination costs when multiple, distributed perspectives are essential.

Some initial considerations to control cognitive costs for incident responders include: (1) assessing coordination strategies relative to the cognitive demands of the incident; (2) recognizing when adaptations represent a tension between multiple competing demands (coordination and cognitive work) and seeking to understand them better rather than u...

a set of 5 short articles on human performance and business critical software infrastructure including: 1. It’s time to revise our appreciation of the human side of Internet-facing software systems. 2. Above the Line, Below the Line. 3. Cognitive Work of Hypothesis Exploration during Anomaly Response. 4. Managing the Hidden Costs of Coordination. 5...

Objective: Nursing shortage in acute care had shown a negative impact on patient safety and nurses. This study determines nurses’ perceptions of hazards affecting patient safety in the intensive care units (ICUs) of a private regional hospital.Methods: An initial focus group was used to explore nurses’ sense of, and experiences with, hazards affect...

Presentation given as part of the critical digital infrastructure track at the Resilience Engineering Symposium in Kalmar, Sweden

Poster presentation at the Resilience Engineering Symposium in Kalmar, Sweden

This article ran in The Avalanche Review issue 37.4 (April 2019). Much of the human factors literature in snow safety decries the fallibility of humans and their poor decision-making, but this article posits that the work done by avalanche professionals is quite exceptional. While it is true that part of risk perception and decision making can b...

Extended abstract for the poster presented at HFES 2019.

The accompanying poster to the 2014 paper 'The human behind the factor: A brief look at how context informs practice.'

A thought-provoking framework for mountain safety professionals to consider a deeper look at human error in backcountry accidents.

Avalanche professionals have long debated human factors and nature of human error in avalanche incidents. But despite extensive research into the personal and psychological characteristics and group structures of individuals involved in avalanche incidents, our ability to understand the decisions and actions of backcountry user groups is limited. C...