ATM automation: guidance on human technology integration

© Civil Aviation Authority 2016Human interaction with technology and automation is a key area of interest to industry and safety regulators alike. In February 2014, a joint CAA/industry workshop considered perspectives on present and future implementation of advanced automated systems. The conclusion was that whilst no additional regulation was necessary, guidance material for industry and regulators was required. Development of this guidance document was completed in 2015 by a working group consisting of CAA, UK industry, academia and industry associations (see Appendix B). This enabled a collaborative approach to be taken, and for regulatory, industry, and workforce perspectives to be collectively considered and addressed. The processes used in developing this guidance included: review of the themes identified from the February 2014 CAA/industry workshop1; review of academic papers, textbooks on automation, incidents and accidents involving automation; identification of key safety issues associated with automated systems; analysis of current and emerging ATM regulatory requirements and guidance material; presentation of emerging findings for critical review at UK and European aviation safety conferences. In December 2015, a workshop of senior management from project partner organisations reviewed the findings and proposals. EASA were briefed on the project before its commencement, and Eurocontrol contributed through membership of the Working Group.Final Published versio

Identifying how automation can lose its intended benefit along the development process : a research plan

Doctoral Consortium Presentation © The Authors 2009Automation is usually considered to improve performance in virtually any domain. However it can fail to deliver the target benefit as intended by those managers and designers advocating the introduction of the tool. In safety critical domains this problem is of significance not only because the unexpected effects of automation might prevent its widespread usage but also because they might turn out to be a contributor to incident and accidents. Research on failures of automation to deliver the intended benefit has focused mainly on human automation interaction. This paper presents a PhD research plan that aims at characterizing decisions for those involved in development process of automation for safety critical domains, taken under productive pressure, to identify where and when the initial intention the automation is supposed to deliver can be lost along the development process. We tentatively call such decisions as drift and the final objective is to develop principles that will allow to identify and compensate for possible sources of drift in the development of new automation. The research is based on case studies and is currently entering Year 2

Beyond the Standard Model

The standard model of particle physics is marvelously successful. However, it is obviously not a complete or final theory. I shall argue here that the structure of the standard model gives some quite concrete, compelling hints regarding what lies beyond.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures available upon request, IAS-HEP 92/2

Major events and minor episodes

Bruno Pontecorvo was a freshly graduated twentyone years old physicist when he joined, in the summer of 1934, the research group led by Enrico Fermi. In October the Panisperna boys would make their most important discovery – radioactivity induced by slow neutrons – and shortly thereafter would be parted by personal and historical events. This paper describes some episodes of those early years and of later periods, sketching a portrait of the team: starting from the extraordinary human and scientific experience of via Panisperna, up to the patent negotiations in USA, to which Pontecorvo’s flight to URSS put an end with unexpected consequences; getting to his first return in Italy, allowed by the sovietic government in 1978, on the occasion of the conference celebrating Edoardo Amaldi’s 70th anniversary. That was the first of several encounters of the author of this paper with Bruno Pontecorvo, which are here briefly recounted, as minor episodes giving a personal perspective on the man

Conformality and Gauge Coupling Unification

It has been recently proposed to embed the standard model in a conformal gauge theory to resolve the hierarchy problem, and to avoid assuming either grand unification or low-energy supersymmetry. By model building based on string-field duality we show how to maintain the successful prediction of an electroweak mixing angle with $sin^2\theta \simeq 0.231$ in conformal gauge theories with three chiral families.Comment: 8 pages LaTe

The masses of vector supermultiplet and of the Higgs supertriplet in supersymmetric SU(5) model

The masses of vector supermultiplet and of the Higgs supertriplet in standard supersymmetric SU(5) model are calculated. Taking into account uncertainties related with the initial coupling constants and threshold corrections we find that in supersymmetric SU(5) model the scale of the supersymmetry breaking could be up to 50 Tev. We find that in the extensions of the standard SU(5) supersymmetric model it is possible to increase the supersymmetry breaking scale up to $O(10^{12})$ Gev. In standard supersymmetric SU(5) model it is possible to increase the GUT scale up to $5 \cdot 10^{17}$ Gev provided that the masses of chiral superoctets and supertriplets are $m_{3,8} \sim O(10^{13}) Gev$. We also propose SU(5) supersymmetric model with 6 light superdoublets and superoctet with a mass $O(10^{9})$ Gev.Comment: 11 pages, latex, no figure

Small-angle physics at the intersecting storage rings forty years later

No abstract: Hadron-hadron cross-sections at the beginning of the 1970sComment: 30 pages, contribution to the CERN Yellow report: 40th Anniversary of the First Proton-Proton Collisions in the CERN Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR

Gauge Theories from Dp-branes

In this talk we discuss the need to introduce a string theory in order to obtain a consistent quantum theory of gravity unified with gauge interactions. We then discuss some basic properties of string theory and the origin and the properties of the D(irichlet)-branes. Finally we use them for discussing the Maldacena conjecture and its extension to non-conformal and less supersymmetric theories.Comment: 9 pages, Latex, Talk given at TRENTO 2001, Trento, Italy (September 2001

The Paths of Unification In The GUST With The G x G Gauge Groups of E(8) x E(8)

In the framework of the four dimensional heterotic superstring with free fermions we discuss the rank eight and/or sixteen Grand Unified String Theories (GUST) which contain the SU(3)_H - gauge family symmetry. We explicitly investigate the paths of the unification in the GUST with gauge symmetry G x G = [SU(5) x U(1) x (SU(3) x U(1))_H]^2. We show that the GUSTs with the G x G gauge group allow to make the scale of unification to be consistent with the string scale M_SU = g_{string} * 5 * 10^17 GeV.Comment: 18 pages, 2 Postscript figures, uses epsf.st

The perturbative odderon in elastic p p and p pbar scattering

Different models for the odderon-proton coupling are considered and their effects on the differential cross section in the dip region in elastic p p and p pbar scattering are investigated. An allowed range for the size of a possible diquark cluster in the proton can be obtained from a geometrical model.Comment: Talk presented at the conference QCD 02 in Montpellier, France. 4 pages, 3 figure