Fourth NASA Langley Formal Methods Workshop

This publication consists of papers presented at NASA Langley Research Center's fourth workshop on the application of formal methods to the design and verification of life-critical systems. Topic considered include: Proving properties of accident; modeling and validating SAFER in VDM-SL; requirement analysis of real-time control systems using PVS; a tabular language for system design; automated deductive verification of parallel systems. Also included is a fundamental hardware design in PVS

Analytical Approach to Improve Safety Incident Management: A Case Study

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Business and Technology Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science by Qing Yu on November 16, 2020

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

An overview of decision table literature 1982-1995.

This report gives an overview of the literature on decision tables over the past 15 years. As much as possible, for each reference, an author supplied abstract, a number of keywords and a classification are provided. In some cases own comments are added. The purpose of these comments is to show where, how and why decision tables are used. The literature is classified according to application area, theoretical versus practical character, year of publication, country or origin (not necessarily country of publication) and the language of the document. After a description of the scope of the interview, classification results and the classification by topic are presented. The main body of the paper is the ordered list of publications with abstract, classification and comments.

Development and Initial Evaluation of a Reinforced Cue Detection Model to Assess Situation Awareness in Commercial Aircraft Cockpits

Commercial transport aircraft of today vary greatly from early aircraft with regards to how the aircraft are controlled and the feedback provided from the machine to the human operator. Over time, as avionics systems became more automated, pilots had less direct control over their aircraft. Much research exists in the literature about automation issues, and several major accidents over the last twenty years spurred interest about how to maintain the benefits of automation while improving the overall human-machine interaction as the pilot is considered the last line of defense. An important reason for maintaining or even improving overall pilot situation awareness is that the resulting improved situation awareness can assist the human pilot in rapidly solving unanticipated, novel problems for which no computer logic has been written. It is essential for the pilots to obtain cues to make appropriate decisions under time pressure. However, to date, no studies have directly examined the approach of reinforcing the relevant flight and automation status cues during flight to increase the pilot’s situation awareness when a failure unexpectedly occurs. Attitudes toward, and issues with automated systems from the pilots’ perspectives were studied using a survey completed by commercial air transport pilots. The survey results were used as the framework for designing a simulation analysis, using a small group of commercial airline pilots, to assess the benefits of a reinforced cue detection model. A phenomenological assessment of open ended questions asked at the conclusion of each simulation showed, subject to the limits of the relatively small sample size, that the “Reinforced Cue Detection Model” implemented in the form of asking the pilots situational awareness questions during the flight, can help to reduce pilot’s complacency, increase situation awareness, and make automation a better team member. Pilots also found reinforced cues to be helpful in the event of unexpected system failure. The current research supports literature regarding pilots’ opinions towards automated systems and indicates that there are benefits to be gained from improving the pilot automation integration. The Reinforced Cue Detection Model, albeit tested on a small sample size, supported improvement of the pilots’ situation awareness

Flight deck automation: Promises and realities

Issues of flight deck automation are multifaceted and complex. The rapid introduction of advanced computer-based technology onto the flight deck of transport category aircraft has had considerable impact both on aircraft operations and on the flight crew. As part of NASA's responsibility to facilitate an active exchange of ideas and information among members of the aviation community, a NASA/FAA/Industry workshop devoted to flight deck automation, organized by the Aerospace Human Factors Research Division of NASA Ames Research Center. Participants were invited from industry and from government organizations responsible for design, certification, operation, and accident investigation of transport category, automated aircraft. The goal of the workshop was to clarify the implications of automation, both positive and negative. Workshop panels and working groups identified issues regarding the design, training, and procedural aspects of flight deck automation, as well as the crew's ability to interact and perform effectively with the new technology. The proceedings include the invited papers and the panel and working group reports, as well as the summary and conclusions of the conference

A Practical Approach to Preventing Systematic Error in the Maintenance of Instrumented Safeguards

PresentationInstrumentation and electrical (I&E) maintenance is typically managed using site-wide policies, practices, and procedures. Since I&E equipment is part of the control system and nearly every other layer of protection, the cumulative impact of poor I&E performance can be a significant contributor to major events. Systemic problems in managing I&E equipment reliability lowers process safety performance across a site. Practical guidance is needed on how to assess the vulnerability of existing sites to instrumented safeguard failure due to maintenance deficits. This paper leverages Reason’s organizational accident model as a framework to discuss site-specific factors that impact a site’s susceptibility to maintenance error. A table of more than 60 human factors covering I&E maintenance activities was developed and organized by 4 elements of causality: organizational processes, workplace practices, personnel traits, and enabling conditions. The human factors table can be used to rate an industrial site on a negative-to-positive scale, highlighting those areas where systemic changes would likely improve maintenance performance and instrument reliability