Human Performance Contributions to Safety in Commercial Aviation

In the commercial aviation domain, large volumes of data are collected and analyzed on the failures and errors that result in infrequent incidents and accidents, but in the absence of data on behaviors that contribute to routine successful outcomes, safety management and system design decisions are based on a small sample of non- representative safety data. Analysis of aviation accident data suggests that human error is implicated in up to 80% of accidents, which has been used to justify future visions for aviation in which the roles of human operators are greatly diminished or eliminated in the interest of creating a safer aviation system. However, failure to fully consider the human contributions to successful system performance in civil aviation represents a significant and largely unrecognized risk when making policy decisions about human roles and responsibilities. Opportunities exist to leverage the vast amount of data that has already been collected, or could be easily obtained, to increase our understanding of human contributions to things going right in commercial aviation. The principal focus of this assessment was to identify current gaps and explore methods for identifying human success data generated by the aviation system, from personnel and within the supporting infrastructure

Aerospace Medicine and Biology. A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 244 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in February 1981. Aerospace medicine and aerobiology topics are included. Listings for physiological factors, astronaut performance, control theory, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics are included

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography (supplement 229)

This bibliography lists 109 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in January 1982

Analyzing human factors in road accidents: TRACE WP5 Summary Report

The main objectives of TRACE WP5 'Human factors' deliverables are: i) To support a better standardization of accident analysis in Europe on a scientific background, ii) To provide operational models and methodological classification grids dealing with 'human factors' aspects involved in road accidents, iii) To promote a comprehensive analysis of the involvement of human beings, going further than the usual 'user-orientated causal analysis' often limited at establishing the driver 'at fault' and without searching for the background reasons of the problems met par road users. Such objectives involve analyzing accidents as the symptom of the difficulties met by drivers in certain driving situations, and as a revelatory of their needs in help. Two questions have to be asked in order to progress in the understanding of accident causation: 1) What are precisely and operationally the human failures in accidents? But also: 2) What are the reasons for these human failures? Keeping in mind that these reasons are of multiple natures and combine most of the time to produce the final event. By so doing, the definition of typical scenarios of 'human error' production can open to the definition of more appropriate countermeasures, well fitted to human needs

Occupational Cultures as a Challenge to Technological Innovation

This paper explains conflict over technological process innovation in cultural terms, drawing primarily on a case study of electric power distribution and strategies to automate its operation

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 378)

This bibliography lists 185 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during Aug. 1993. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and physiology, life support systems and man/system technology, protective clothing, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, planetary biology, and flight crew behavior and performance

Harnessing Big Data for Characterizing Driving Volatility in Instantaneous Driving Decisions – Implications for Intelligent Transportation Systems

This dissertation focuses on combining connected vehicles data, naturalistic driving sensor and telematics data, and traditional transportation data to prospect opportunities for engineering smart and proactive transportation systems.The key idea behind the dissertation is to understand (and where possible reduce) “driving volatility” in instantaneous driving decisions and increase driving and locational stability. As a new measure of micro driving behaviors, the concept of “driving volatility” captures the extent of variations in driving, especially hard accelerations/braking, jerky maneuvers, and frequent switching between different driving regimes. The key motivation behind analyzing driving volatility is to help predict what drivers will do in the short term. Consequently, this dissertation develops a “volatility matrix” which takes a systems approach to operationalizing driving volatility at different levels, trip-based volatility, location-based volatility, event-based volatility, and driver-based volatility. At the trip-level, the dynamics of driving regimes extracted from Basic Safety Messages transmitted between connected vehicles are analyzed at a microscopic level, and where the interactions between microscopic driving decisions and ecosystem of mapped local traffic states in close proximity surrounding the host vehicle are characterized. Another new idea relates to extending driving volatility to specific network locations, termed as “location-based volatility”. A new methodology is proposed for combining emerging connected vehicles data with traditional transportation data (crash, traffic, road geometrics data, etc.) to identify roadway locations where traffic crashes are waiting to happen. The idea of event-based and driver-based volatility introduces the notion that volatility in longitudinal and lateral directions prior to involvement in safety critical events (crashes/near-crashes) can be a leading indicator of proactive safety.Overall, by studying driving volatility from different lenses, the dissertation contributes to the scientific analysis of real-world connected vehicles data, and to generate actionable knowledge relevant to the design of smart and intelligent transportation systems. The concept of driving volatility matrix provides a systems framework for characterizing the health of three fundamental elements of a transportation system: health of driver, environment, and the vehicle. The implications of the findings and potential applications to proactive network level screening, customized driver assist and control systems, driving performance monitoring are discussed in detail

Has the time come for an older driver vehicle?

The population of the world is growing older. As people grow older they are more likely to experience declines that can make operating a personal automobile more difficult. Once driving abilities begin to decline, older adults are often faced with decreased mobility. Due to the preference for and pervasiveness of the personal automobile for satisfying mobility needs, there is a global necessity to keep older adults driving for as long as they can safely do so. In this report we explore the question: Has the time come for an older driver vehicle? Great gains in safe mobility could be made by designing automobiles that take into account, and help overcome, some of the deficits in abilities common in older people. The report begins by providing a background and rationale for an older driver vehicle, including discussions of relevant trends, age-related declines in functional abilities, and the adverse consequences of decreased mobility. The next section discusses research and issues related to vehicle design and advanced technology with respect to older drivers. The next section explores crashworthiness issues and the unique requirements for older adults. The following section discusses the many issues related to marketing a vehicle that has been designed for older drivers. The report concludes that there is a clear global opportunity to improve the safety, mobility, and quality of life of older adults by designing vehicles and vehicle technologies that help overcome common age-related deficits. The marketing of these vehicles to older consumers, however, will be challenging and will likely require further market research. The development of vehicle design features, new automotive technologies, and crashworthiness systems in the future should be guided by both knowledge of the effects of frailty/fragility of the elderly on crash outcomes, as well as knowledge of common drivingrelated declines in psychomotor, visual, and cognitive abilities. Design strategies that allow for some degree of customization may be particularly beneficial. It is clear that training and education efforts for using new vehicle features will need to be improved.The University of Michigan Sustainable Worldwide Transportationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89960/1/102821.pd