The organisational precursors to human automation interaction issues in safety-critical domains: the case of an automated alarm system from the air traffic management domain

Much has been written about the side effects of automation in complex safety-critical domains, such as air traffic management, aviation, nuclear power generation, and healthcare. Here, human factors and safety researchers have long acknowledged that the potential of automation to increase cost-effectiveness, quality of service and safety, is accompanied by undesired side effects or issues in human automation interaction (HAI). Such HAI issues may introduce the potential for increased confusion, uncertainty, and frustration amongst sharp end operators, i.e. the users of automation. These conditions may result in operators to refuse to use the automation, in impaired ability of operators to control the hazardous processes for which they are responsible, and in new, unintended paths to safety failure. The present thesis develops a qualitative framework of the organisational precursors to HAI issues (OPHAII) that can be found in safety-critical domains. Organisational precursors denote those organisational and managerial conditions that, although distant in time and space from the operational environment, may actually influence the quality of HAI found there. Such precursors have been extensively investigated by organisational safety (OS) scholars in relation to the occurrence of accidents and disasters—although not HAI issues. Thus, the framework’s development is motivated by the intent to explore the theoretical gap lying at the intersection between the OS area and the current perspectives on the problem—the human computer interaction (HCI) and the system lifecycle ones. While considering HAI issues as a design problem or a failure in human factors integration and/or safety assurance respectively, both perspectives, in fact, ignore, the organisational roots of the problem. The OPHAII framework was incrementally developed based on three qualitative studies: two successive, historical, case studies coupled with a third corroboratory expert study. The first two studies explored the organisational precursors to a known HAI issue: the nuisance alert problem relative to an automated alarm system from the air traffic management domain. In particular, the first case study investigated retrospectively the organisational response to the nuisance alert problem in the context of the alarm’s implementation and improvement in the US between 1977 and 2006. The second case study has a more contemporary focus, and examined at the organisational response to the same problem within two European Air Navigation Service Providers between 1990 and 2010. The first two studies produced a preliminary version of the framework. The third study corroborated and refined this version by subjecting it to the criticism from a panel of 11 subject matter experts. The resulting framework identifies three classes of organisational precursors: (i) the organisational assumptions driving automation adoption and improvement; (2) the availability of specific organisational capabilities for handling HAI issues; and (3) the control of implementation quality at the boundary between the service provider and the software manufacturer. These precursors advance current understanding of the organisational factors involved in the (successful and problematic) handling of HAI issues within safety-critical service provider organisations. Its dimensions support the view that HAI issues can be seen as and organisational phenomenon—an organisational problem that can be the target of analysis and improvements complementary to those identified by the HCI and the system lifecycle perspectives

CO-EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS OF FINANCIAL INCLUSION OF GENERATION Z IN A SUB-SAHARAN DIGITAL FINANCIAL ECOSYSTEM

The growing digital consumerism in modern society is associated with higher expectations of customer experience, and as such the business environment is expected to co-evolve by developing more consumer-centric, sharing-based and fastpaced business models. This calls for deeper understanding of consumer aspirations and preferences in a given local context. Therefore, this paper explores the co-evolutionary dynamics of digital financial inclusion of Generation Z against a backdrop of limited understanding of the dynamic complexity of the financial business environment in the digital age. A case study of a digital financial ecosystem in Zambia within sub-Saharan Africa is then employed herein to reveal the co-evolutionary dynamics of financial inclusion of Generation Z within the framework of complex adaptive systems. For this purpose, a system dynamics modelling tool of Causal loop analysis is used to visualise the co-evolutionary dynamics. The paper has demonstrated that digital financial inclusion occurs within a continuum of co-evolutionary dynamics in which the financial institutions build consumer demand for digital financial services based on the participatory accountability and financial capability of the clientele. The paper concludes that digital financial inclusion is an emergent outcome of the complex adaptive behaviour of a financial business ecosystem in the increasingly digitising society. Therefore, development of inclusive financial business models must embrace the digital consumerism of the clientele, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where there is a demographic boom of Generation Z with a growing propensity for digital consumerism

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse