A framework to support human factors of automation in railway intelligent infrastructure

Technological and organisational advances have increased the potential for remote access and proactive monitoring of the infrastructure in various domains and sectors – water and sewage, oil and gas and transport. Intelligent Infrastructure (II) is an architecture that potentially enables the generation of timely and relevant information about the state of any type of infrastructure asset, providing a basis for reliable decision-making. This paper reports an exploratory study to understand the concepts and human factors associated with II in the railway, largely drawing from structured interviews with key industry decision-makers and attachment to pilot projects. Outputs from the study include a data-processing framework defining the key human factors at different levels of the data structure within a railway II system and a system-level representation. The framework and other study findings will form a basis for human factors contributions to systems design elements such as information interfaces and role specifications

A multimodal investigation of moral decision making in harmful contexts

Since the two landmark publications in moral psychology (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001), the field has experienced an affective revolution that has put emotions at the center of the stage. Although work on exploring role of emotions in assessing morality of various types of moral acts (impure, unfair, etc.; Haidt, 2007) abounds, studying its role in harmful behaviors presents a unique challenge. The aversion to harming others is an integral part of the foundations of human moral sense and it presents itself in the form of deeply ingrained moral intuitions (Haidt, 2007). Since creating laboratory situations to investigate harm aversion raises ethical issues, research has primarily relied on studying hypothetical cases. In the current thesis, we utilize hypothetical vignettes to explore role of emotions in both moral judgment and behavior in harmful contexts, both when harm is carried out intentionally or produced accidentally. Study 1 investigates the role of emotion in motivating utilitarian behavior in moral dilemmas when presented in contextually salient virtual reality format as compared to judgment about the same cases for their textual versions. Study 2 investigates divergent contributions of two different sources of affect, one stemming from self-focused distress and the other focused on other-oriented concern, on utilitarian moral judgments in autistics. Study 3 investigates the role of empathic arousal in condemning agents involved in unintentional harms and why harmful outcomes have a greater bearing on blame as compared to acceptability judgments

Performing the responsive and committed employee through the sociomaterial mangle of connection

In the light of increasingly mobile and flexible work, maintaining connections to work is presented as vital. Various studies have sought to understand how these connections are experienced and managed, particularly through the use of smartphones (e.g. Mazmanian, Orlikowski & Yates, 2013). We take a new perspective on this practice by bringing together the conceptual fields of sociomateriality (Pickering, 1995) and identity work (Svenningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Through the analysis of narratives produced by smartphone users in an engineering firm we argue that connection can be viewed as a sociomaterial assemblage that performs particular identities: being contactable and responsive; being involved and committed; and being in-demand and authoritative. Through this analysis we both elaborate the concept of connectivity at work and indicate how the material is implicated in identity performances

The Quintinshill Disaster and Britain’s Railways During the First World War

Although the Home Front in Britain during the First World War has received a great deal more attention in recent years, the role of the railways has been largely overlooked. Yet the railway were crucial in maintaining the war effort and wartime economy, transporting not only weaponry and troops, but food items for both the domestic population and the forces; mail travelling to and from the front lines, and essential commodities such as coal for the nation’s navy. This dissertation considers the impact of the early stages of the war, through analysis of the worst disaster in British railway history at Quintinshill on the 22nd of May 1915. Five trains were in involved in a catastrophic collision leading to the loss of 226 military and civilian lives. By utilizing documents detailing the coordination of the railways by the Railway Executive Committee, and exploring the events at Quintinshill using the official report into the disaster, as well as newspaper reports and company documents, the operation of the railways under wartime conditions is examined. Using the Quintinshill disaster as a prism through which to analyse the issues, the extreme pressures faced by the railways and the people that operated them during this crucial period have been examined, showing how normal protocols dictating safe operations on the railways were being neglected during wartime

Emerging Informatics

The book on emerging informatics brings together the new concepts and applications that will help define and outline problem solving methods and features in designing business and human systems. It covers international aspects of information systems design in which many relevant technologies are introduced for the welfare of human and business systems. This initiative can be viewed as an emergent area of informatics that helps better conceptualise and design new world-class solutions. The book provides four flexible sections that accommodate total of fourteen chapters. The section specifies learning contexts in emerging fields. Each chapter presents a clear basis through the problem conception and its applicable technological solutions. I hope this will help further exploration of knowledge in the informatics discipline

Applying simulation techniques to train railway traction drivers

The writer analyses the introduction of a simulator enabled approach to railway traction driver training and assesses whether the transition from a conventional training delivery process has been effective. The evaluation of effectiveness is based on a study of Iarnród Éireann’s simulator system. Evidence is contained within four supporting strands, i.e., the change in relevant operational risk that has been calculated using ex ante and ex post runs of Iarnród Éireann’s risk model, the internal rate of return on the financial investment necessary to effect the change, the results of an operator attitudinal study and the findings of an independent expert audit. The study establishes that simulation is an effective training medium. The attributes of the system and the use cases that resulted in this finding are described. The writer also presents additional value-adding training objectives that could increase the project’s internal rate of return or IRR. The study affirms that the required verisimilitude of a simulator system is a function of the training goals and the nature of the skills under development. Design features and use strategies can mitigate for potential negative effects of simulator operation. The findings have industry-wide relevance for those tasked with providing effective training to the 133,000 train drivers within the European Union