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Coping with Complexity: The psychology of human behavior in complex systems
... One example of a characteristic of a field of activity that affects the kinds of problems that arise is the degree of coupling in the monitored process (Perrow, 1984). Highly coupled processes create or exacerbate a variety of demands on cognitive functions (Woods, 1988). For example, increased coupling creates: ...
... Heuristics are useful because they are usually relatively easy to apply and minimize the cognitive effort required to produce decisions. These simplifications may be useful approximations that allow limited resource practitioners to function robustly over a variety of problem demand factors (Woods, 1988) or they may be distortions or mis-conceptions that appear to work satisfactorily under some conditions but lead to error in others. Feltovich et al. (1989) call the latter "over-simplifications." ...
... They shifted their focus of attention from diagnosing the source of the hypotension to responding to the immediate threat to the patient. This ability to shift from diagnosis to disturbance management is crucial in the operating room and in other domains to maintain the system in a stable configuration and permit later diagnosis and correction of the underlying faults (Woods, 1988; in press-a). ...
original version of BEhind Human Error. Second edition 2010 from Ashgate
... Situation Awareness comes from the military operation as a strategy of gaining awareness of the enemy before the enemy does the same. The definition of situation awareness was first elaborated on the concern of having a separation between the human understanding of the system status and the actual system status [26]. SA is also important in many other domains, although it sometimes receives different names. ...
... Used by airlines on the flight crew and other roles in critical safety positions, the CRM aims to enhance flight safety through operational practices and training. According to FAA AC-120-51E, CRM training covers five subjects: situation awareness, communication skills, teamwork, task allocation, and decision-making within a comprehensive framework of standard operating procedures (SOP) [26]. General aviation has evolved over the past century, learned from accidents, and has well-established safe operational procedures. ...
Urban Air Mobility operation is currently under discussion by the industry, authorities, and society, dealing with new concepts, new technologies, and complex challenges. For UAM safety, it is fundamental to strive for high levels of correct decision-making among agents and services. In safety-critical systems like UAM transportation, it is crucial to secure Situation Awareness (SA). Systems engineers, architects, and organizations must plan for SA acquisition and maintenance from early concept studies to ensure the relevant information is shared, allowing good decision-making. The article proposes a new approach to represent Situation Awareness in the UAM ecosystem using Enterprise Architecture (EA) modeling through the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF). To understand the interactions and behaviors committed to SA, decision-making, and safe performance, SA is explored using a process driven by a comprehensive picture of an entire enterprise from the perspectives of designers, providers, and operators. The UAF modeling language and domain metamodel were used as the Enterprise Architecture modeling methodology. The model proposed in this work presents a novel and comprehensive representation of SA in the UAM ecosystem. The different views from the model are explored to discuss how the SA can improve the safe accomplishment of UAM missions. The results include views combining people, data, operators, and operational processes showing how an enterprise support Situation Awareness as a competence.
... Resilience is a function of "situation awareness, management of keystone vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity" in a complex, dynamic and connected environment (Rzegocki 2015). According to Gilson, the concept of situation awareness was first formulated during World War I by Oswald Boelke, who realized "the importance of gaining enemy's awareness before the enemy gained similar awareness and devised methods of achieving it" (Woods 1988). Over the years, situation awareness has become a research topic in a variety of fields, where people perform tasks in complex and dynamic systems such as military operations, aviation, air traffic control, driving and the C4I systems (Salmon et al. 2006). ...
Organizational resilience (OR) increases when the company has the ability to anticipate, plan, make decisions, and react quickly to changes and disruptions. Thus the company should focus on the creation and implementation of proactive and innovative solutions. Proactive processing of information requires modern technological solutions and new techniques used. The main focus of this study is to propose the best technique of Machine Learning (ML) in the context of accuracy for predicting the attributes of the organizational resilience potential. Based on the calculations, the research includes estimating them through the applications of regression and machine learning methods. The dataset is obtained from the results of the our survey based on the questionnaire consisting of 48 items mainly established on OR attributes formed on ISO 22316:2017 standard. Based on the outcomes of the study, it can be stated that the optimal technique in the context of accuracy for predicting the attributes of the organizational resilience potential is ensemble methods. The k-nearest neighbor (KNN) filtering-based data pre-processing technique for stacked ensemble classifier is used. The stacking is achieved with three base classifiers namely Random Forest (RF), Naive Bayes (NB), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The chosen ensemble method should be implemented in an organization systemically according to the circle of innovation, and should support the quality of managerial decision-making process by increasing the accuracy of organizational resilience potential prediction, and indication of the importance of attributes and factors affecting the potential for organizational resilience.
... According to Gilson [46], Oswald Boelke established the notion of situational awareness during World War I, he recognized the necessity of understanding the adversary before the enemy got similar knowledge and created ways to attain this. The separation between the human operator's perception of the system state and natural system status is central to the definition of situational awareness [47]. The first impetus for R&D came from the aviation sector, where pilots and air traffic controllers are under intense pressure to improve their situational awareness [48]. ...
The adverse effects of work schedule on driving performance are relatively common. Therefore, it is necessary to fully understand an organisation’s safety culture to improve driver performance in order to avoid road crashes. This study aims to investigate the moderating role of safety culture in the relationship between driver work schedules and driving performance. The study developed a conceptual framework based on the literature review of existing studies, which is supported by situation awareness theory that explains the model’s relationships and supports the study’s hypotheses. Three hundred four questionnaires were collected from oil and gas truck drivers then Structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied to test the study hypotheses. Derived from the findings, the outer loading for all items was above the threshold of 0.70 unless two items were deleted. The latent exogenous variables of safety culture and work schedule explained 59.1% of driving performance. Besides, work schedule and safety culture significantly impact driving performance. In addition, the results show that safety culture moderates the unfavourable work schedule impact on driving performance with an effect size of 23%. Therefore, this study showed strong evidence that safety culture acts as a critical moderator in reducing the negative impact of work schedule on driving performance in the energy transportation sector. Drivers with high safety culture can manage and reduce the effect of work schedule disorder on driving performance through their safety attitude and patterns compared to those drivers with low safety culture. Consequently, the improvement in driving performance will be noticed among drivers with a high awareness of safety culture.
... The author pointed out that misclassification of the current computing system mode could lead to input errors, which may have serious consequences. One reason for mode errors is the failure of the human operator of the system to keep track of the mode changes [16]. Another reason is that the rules of interaction change with mode changes [17]. ...
In this study, we designed two user interfaces for automated vehicles operated in the modes that correspond to the SAE automation levels 0 to 3. The first is a level-centred interface that allows the driver to increase or decrease the automation level step-by-step. The second is a function-centred interface that has independent driving controls in the longitudinal and lateral directions. We implemented prototypes for the two interfaces and conducted driver-in-the-loop experiments on a driving simulator to verify their effectiveness in the driver's mode awareness. For events on the road, the participants took actions to control the vehicle, which might cause mode changes, and answered the modes he/she believed. The experimental results show that the mode confusion rate of the level-centred interface is twice higher than that of the function-centred interface. Also, visual feedbacks can reduce the mode confusion rate dramatically. The results show that a function-centred user interface combined with adequate visual and/or auditory feedback is essential to improve driver's mode awareness when driving an automated vehicle.
... In the 1980 s, Hollnagel (in Scandinavia) and Woods (in the US) developed their own perspectives on cognition, human error and safety and accident models in a CSE context originally created by Rasmussen (Hollnagel, Woods, 1983, Woods, Roth, 1988, Hollnagel, 1993, 1998, Woods, Johannesen, Cook, Sarter, 1994, Woods, 1988. The two authors are conceptually close, and their collaboration leads to the proposition of Joint Cognitive Systems (JCS) in the mid-2000 (Hollnagel, Woods, 2005, a development that started in the early 1980 s (Hollnagel, Woods, 1983). ...
Over the past two decades, the ‘new view’ has become a popular term in safety theory and practice. It has however also been criticised, provoking division and controversy. The aim of this article is to clarify the current situation. It describes the origins, ambiguities and successes of the ‘new view’ as well as the critiques formulated. The article begins by outlining the origins of this concept, in the 1980 s and 1990 s, from the cognitive (system) engineering (CSE) school initiated by Rasmussen, Hollnagel and Woods. This differed from Reason’s approach to human error in this period. The article explains how Dekker, in the early 2000 s, translates ideas from the CSE school to coin the term ‘new view’, while also developing, shortly after, an argument against Reason’s legacy that was more radical and critical than his predecessors’. Secondly, the article describes the ambiguities associated with the term ‘new view’ because of the different programs that have derived from CSE (Resilience Engineering – RE then Safety II, Safety Differently, Theory of Graceful Extensibility). The text identifies three programs by different thinkers (methodological, formal and critical) and Dekker’s three eclectic versions of the ‘new view’. Thirdly, the article discusses the successes of the CSE and RE school, showing how it has strongly resonated with many practitioners outside the academic world. Fourthly, the critiques raised within the field of human factors and system safety but also from different traditions (e.g., system safety engineering with Leveson, sociology of safety with Hopkins) are introduced, and discussed.
While systems engineers and philosophers of technology have analysed failure in artefacts, the nature of failure in sociotechnical systems has been largely underdeveloped. Sociotechnical systems differ from artefacts in that they are made up of relationships between people and technologies, and this difference means that failure needs a different analysis. In this article, we provide an account of two kinds of malfunctioning in sociotechnical systems. To accomplish this, we draw on resources from the disciplines of Human Factors, Systems Engineering, and Philosophy of Technology. We offer an account of two kinds of malfunction that are not only dependent on functions but also on roles of people involved in the functioning of sociotechnical systems. Hence, we aim to broaden the discourse of malfunctions in sociotechnical systems in terms of relations (relational roles). Primarily, we address two roles of users and operators and show how these different roles involve different kinds of malfunctions. Specifically, we highlight that two kinds of malfunctions can occur in sociotechnical systems: ambiguity-based failure and expectation-based failure.
Weather is a big deal in the world of aviation, especially in general aviation (GA) operations. Previous research identified that GA incurs the majority of weather-related accidents within civil aviation operations. In fact, GA weather-related accidents have a high fatality rate. Accidents associated with flights approved for visual flight rules (VFR) that ended up in instrument meteorologic conditions (IMC) account for the majority of weather-related fatalities. Accident data also indicate private pilots with low experience and pilots without their instrument rating were the most likely to fly VFR into IMC. This chapter describes and discusses contributing factors to the weather-related accidents in general aviation from a human factors perspective. This includes discussing the cognitive underpinnings to the weather preflight planning process, as well as how as situation awareness, decision making, risk assessment, and cognitive cues may play a role.
Functioning as a team member is central to patient care and is important for more than safety; it is about successfully accomplishing work. The goal of this section is to introduce you to TeamSTEPPS (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (“AHA Team Training”)), a group of tools designed to facilitate human work in a complex system. The AHRQ and the Department of Defense jointly developed TeamSTEPPS in order to provide the United States healthcare system an evidence-based system to improve team performance. All the TeamSTEPPS tools can be found on the AHRQ website (www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps), along with useful information on utilization.Understanding the theory behind these tools is critical. We will first provide a brief introduction to how work is conceptualized in complex systems. We will then move on to some specific tools of TeamSTEPPS and describe their essential elements. It is vital to understand that this should be considered an introduction of the material. TeamSTEPPS tools can only be fully learned with practice and coaching (just like surgery). To appropriately develop these skills, we strongly recommend attending a training session at your hospital or at one of the TeamSTEPPS training centers throughout the country.KeywordsTeamSTEPPSDepartment of defenseAHRQActivity theoryCUS statement
Meta-analyses have provided major findings about developmental predictors of offending. However, there has been little focus on their relative ability to predict offending behaviour. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of meta-analyses with two aims: 1) to summarize all well-established knowledge about developmental (explanatory) predictors of offending, and 2) to sort those predictors according to their effect size. The strongest predictors of general offending were related to family/parental dimensions. Delinquent peers, school/employment problems, family problems, certain types of mental health problems, and alcohol/substance abuse were the most important predictors of persistence in crime. Our findings suggest the crucial role of family-related developmental predictors in preventing offending. The predictors of persistence in crime highlight the multisystemic nature of persistent antisocial behaviour.
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