Best Practices for Evaluating Flight Deck Interfaces for Transport Category Aircraft with Particular Relevance to Issues of Attention, Awareness, and Understanding CAST SE-210 Output 2 Report 6 of 6

Attention, awareness, and understanding of the flight crew are a critical contributor to safety and the flight deck plays a critical role in supporting these cognitive functions. Changes to the flight deck need to be evaluated for whether the changed device provides adequate support for these functions. This report describes a set of diverse evaluation methods. The report recommends designing the interface-evaluation to span the phases of the device development, from early to late, and it provides methods appropriate at each phase. It describes the various ways in which an interface or interface component can fail to support awareness as potential issues to be assessed in evaluation. It summarizes appropriate methods to evaluate different issues concerning inadequate support for these functions, throughout the phases of development

Context-Enabled Visualization Strategies for Automation Enabled Human-in-the-loop Inspection Systems to Enhance the Situation Awareness of Windstorm Risk Engineers

Insurance loss prevention survey, specifically windstorm risk inspection survey is the process of investigating potential damages associated with a building or structure in the event of an extreme weather condition such as a hurricane or tornado. Traditionally, the risk inspection process is highly subjective and depends on the skills of the engineer performing it. This dissertation investigates the sensemaking process of risk engineers while performing risk inspection with special focus on various factors influencing it. This research then investigates how context-based visualizations strategies enhance the situation awareness and performance of windstorm risk engineers. An initial study investigated the sensemaking process and situation awareness requirements of the windstorm risk engineers. The data frame theory of sensemaking was used as the framework to carry out this study. Ten windstorm risk engineers were interviewed, and the data collected were analyzed following an inductive thematic approach. The themes emerged from the data explained the sensemaking process of risk engineers, the process of making sense of contradicting information, importance of their experience level, internal and external biases influencing the inspection process, difficulty developing mental models, and potential technology interventions. More recently human in the loop systems such as drones have been used to improve the efficiency of windstorm risk inspection. This study provides recommendations to guide the design of such systems to support the sensemaking process and situation awareness of windstorm visual risk inspection. The second study investigated the effect of context-based visualization strategies to enhance the situation awareness of the windstorm risk engineers. More specifically, the study investigated how different types of information contribute towards the three levels of situation awareness. Following a between subjects study design 65 civil/construction engineering students completed this study. A checklist based and predictive display based decision aids were tested and found to be effective in supporting the situation awareness requirements as well as performance of windstorm risk engineers. However, the predictive display only helped with certain tasks like understanding the interaction among different components on the rooftop. For remaining tasks, checklist alone was sufficient. Moreover, the decision aids did not place any additional cognitive demand on the participants. This study helped us understand the advantages and disadvantages of the decision aids tested. The final study evaluated the transfer of training effect of the checklist and predictive display based decision aids. After one week of the previous study, participants completed a follow-up study without any decision aids. The performance and situation awareness of participants in the checklist and predictive display group did not change significantly from first trial to second trial. However, the performance and situation awareness of participants in the control condition improved significantly in the second trial. They attributed this to their exposure to SAGAT questionnaire in the first study. They knew what issues to look for and what tasks need to be completed in the simulation. The confounding effect of SAGAT questionnaires needs to be studied in future research efforts

An ethnomethodological exploration of police officers’ use of a cognitive aid when encountering people with a potential mental disorder

Aim This study investigated a police officer’s situation awareness , when encountering a potentially mentally disordered person. This underpinned the development of a cognitive aid to support them during such encounters. Background Up to 40% of police encounters are associated with someone experiencing a mental disorder. Operational difficulties due to situational complexity, and the police officer’s ignorance regarding the features of mental disorder, often translate into flawed situation awareness. This study built upon the work of Wright et al. (2008) with Lancashire Constabulary. Method An ethnomethodological design was employed, viewed through the theoretical lenses of symbolic interactionism and Endsley’s (1988) situation awareness framework. Completed in two stages, stage one utilised narrative synthesis, and individual semi-structured interviews with eight police officers. Data was thematically analysed to identify emerging themes which underpinned the cognitive aid’s development. Stage two employed a pre-post-test design, utilising video vignettes, note-taking exercises, and focus group interviews with seventeen police officers. The cognitive aid was used operationally prior to conducting semi-structured interviews with ten police officers. Results Emergent themes identified that pre-encounter factors shaped police officers’ situation awareness. This governed their assessment of danger, often resulting in pre-set behaviours to control a situation. Police officers demonstrated improved situation awareness, recognising and responding to a greater range of features of mental disorder when they used the cognitive aid. Contribution of new knowledge This was the first study to explore a police officer’s situation awareness, when encountering a potentially mentally disordered person. It identifies features police officers associate with mental disorder. The findings highlighted the effect of pre-encounter factors and their influence upon the perception of danger. Significantly, the cognitive aid caused a paradigm shift from one defined by an assumption of criminality, to one defined by the interpersonal in which police officers recognised and responded to a person’s mental health and well-being