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Cognitive demands and activities in dynamic fault management: abductive reasoning and disturbance management
... The underpinning central issue is that inherent abnormalities and deviations in a system can be rooted in deep layers and develop into known or unknown paths with potential negative consequences. As Woods [22] points out temporal characteristics of such deviations can provide useful information about the root causes and alternatives for counteraction plans to operators. As a matter of fact, the process should be represented so that operators gain the abilities to track deviations that grow, spread, and subside [22]. ...
... As Woods [22] points out temporal characteristics of such deviations can provide useful information about the root causes and alternatives for counteraction plans to operators. As a matter of fact, the process should be represented so that operators gain the abilities to track deviations that grow, spread, and subside [22]. Similar views seem to have triggered new efforts in developing semantic modeling of dynamic complex systems to assist humans in making sense of the elements in their interactive systems environment. ...
... The traditional scenario (ΔT1) is mostly based on an alarm-based solution where operators naturally have a limited time window (Stage-2 + Stage-3) to become aware of the situation, detect all root causes, predict possible consequences, and take appropriate counteractions. Many such instances follow predefined routines and procedures, with well-known practical limitations and challenges in terms of alarm management as well as operators' cognitive workload [22,32]. Due to a higher degree of interactivity between system elements and the unpredictable behavior patterns of complex systems, considering all possible scenarios under stressful alarm situations is a real challenge both in terms of cognitive demands and execution of right mitigating actions. ...
With the growing scale of industrial demands, complexities, and uncertainties around asset engineering and operations due to advanced technology utilization, digitalization, sustainability, new operating models, etc., the sensitive role of abnormalities and deviations towards human safety, systems security, reliability and resilience of engineering assets and industrial systems are becoming even more significant for modern industrial sectors as well as societies in general. In these contexts, the abilities of operators to capture and sense-make early signals that emerge from engineering assets and systems need more attention since it enables them to enhance critical situation awareness (SA) during complex operations. This calls for proactive solutions that can integrate core data with operator knowledge using suitable logical approaches, particularly in a period where there is growing recognition that asset data can provide strong support for engineering and operational decisions in demanding contexts. Based on an ongoing research project, this paper sheds light on abnormalities and deviations; two specific attributes that should be better understood. The purpose is to explore how to capitalize them at very early sense-making stages to enhance situation awareness and thus resilience of dynamic and complex engineering assets and systems. Through a critical review of the current state of knowledge, together with industrial observations, this paper studies these core concepts in detail with due attention to the critical need of so-called priory contextual knowledge and hybrid contextual decision solutions. This R&D work explores proactive possibilities to mitigate inherent potentials for unwanted events and incidents to enhance resilience in the era of digital twins and cyber-physical systems, where complex technologies and operational demands generate new conditions for asset performance.
... With the advent of the paperless cockpit philosophy and affordable technologies in aviation, Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs), electronic checklists and digital Quick Reference Handbooks (QRHs) are now part of every commercial aircraft cockpit. In the case of a system failure, the aircraft warning system draws the pilot's attention to a critical or urgent problem (Woods, 1994;Woods & Sarter, 2010). The fault message presented on the display prompts pilots to retrieve and action a digital non-normal checklist. ...
... The assumptions underlying QRH design do not always hold true, though. As aircraft become more robots than machines (Carim Jr., 2016), the possibility of complex anomalous behaviour increases exponentially (Woods, 1994), leaving pilots to cope with an increasing number of ill-structured technical faults. These are defined as problems that go beyond the QRH and warning system scope. ...
... The revisited anomaly management model proposed by Carim et al. (2016Carim et al. ( , 2020 is a further elaboration of the original proposition by Woods (1994) and . According to the revisited model, a fault, whether well-or ill-structured, is presented in terms of disturbances because of the lack of linear relationship between the fault cause and symptom (Woods, 1995;Watts-Perotti & Woods, 2007). ...
Aviation digital non-normal checklists neither solve the problematic nature of procedures as organisational control mechanisms nor capitalise on the benefits of the technology. To create resilient operational systems, it is necessary to shift towards seeing abnormal and emergency checklists as resources for the activity: A piece of information that helps pilots assess the severity of the problem, diagnose the cause and plan, and implement a proper response when needed if needed. Fragmented checklists, integrating different resources in just one place, and Decision Support System technology are mechanisms to enhance the potential of the digital quick reference handbook.KeywordsResilience engineeringDigital checklistQRHSafety ruleEmergency
... Anomaly response situations can become quite challenging as cascading effects and time pressures constrain the tasks of monitoring, diagnosis, and replanning. These activities are further complicated because operators must handle multiple interleaved tasks, consider multiple interacting goals, and be ready to revise assessments and plans as new evidence comes in or as the situation changes (Watts-Perotti and Woods, 2009;Woods, 1994). Schematic of anomaly-driven cognitive activities involved in disturbance management. ...
... Adapted from Woods, D.D., 1994. Cognitive demands and activities in dynamic fault management: abductive reasoning and disturbance management. ...
... These skills must be complemented by cognitive knowledge-based competencies, what Caird described as building the functional fidelity, which are necessary for improvisational and adaptive decision making when events move beyond prescribed doctrine. Training scenarios must be designed that are complex enough to challenge these competencies at both task and team levels as situations move from textbook into exceptional cases (Woods & Hollnagel, 2006;Woods, 1994). Illustrative of the escalation principle (Woods & Hollnagel, 2006), as problems cascade, uncertainties place more demand on the cognitive and coordinative work of the agents in the system to respond. ...
In many mission critical work domains effective scenario based training and observation are crucial to the success of complex socio-technical systems. Organizations employ many different approaches toward conducting these kinds of training sessions, but as recent high surprise disasters such as the Columbia loss and the 9.11 terrorist attacks indicate, there will always be new surprises that put that learning efficacy to the test. Anomalies will oc- cur, new failure conditions will challenge existing systems and organizations, and these challenges of adapting to surprise and to resilience are nowhere more evident than in these mission critical domains. However, a significant amount of the training conducted in these types of organizations is not about training to be surprised, rather, its about showing indi- vidual competency and that current training is effective. These large-scale socio-technical organizations could be more resilient if they effectively exploit the opportunities from these exercises to capture learning and facilitate a deeper understanding behind the cognitive work in the domain.
This thesis proposes the learning laboratory as a support framework for such exercise de- sign. The learning lab framework serves as a general abstraction of CSE staged world study design and envisioning techniques and extends these approaches to cope with new scalability challenges to resilience. CSE has a long history of conducting research in com- plex domains utilizing effective staged and scaled world design techniques to support and illustrate the critical cognitive challenges of practitioners at work. The learning lab incor- porates a variety of these techniques into a common framework that can be applied to a variety of different types of exercises already being conducted in order to maximize organ- izational understanding and learning from scenario based observation exercises.
original version of BEhind Human Error. Second edition 2010 from Ashgate
A look at how we respond to the unexpected.
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. Beyond the 'Fix-It' Treadmill.
Four incidents from web-based software companies reveal important aspects of anomaly response processes when incidents arise in web operations, two of which are discussed in this article. One particular cognitive function examined in detail is hypothesis generation and exploration, given the impact of obscure automation on engineers’ development of coherent models of the systems they manage. Each case was analyzed using the techniques and concepts of cognitive systems engineering. The set of cases provides a window into the cognitive work "above the line" in incident management of complex web-operation systems.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.