Cognitive mismatches in the cockpit : Will they ever be a thing of the past?

Conference: Flightdeck of the future edited by SHARPLES, Saraha, STEDMON, AlexInternational audienceChanges in aviation over the last 30 years have dramatically affected the way that flight crews fly aircraft. The implementation and evolution of the glass cockpit, however, has happened in an almost ad hoc fashion, meaning that it does not always properly support the flight crew in carrying out their tasks. In such situations, the crew's mental model of what is happening does not always match the real state of affairs. In other words, there is a cognitive mismatch. An initial taxonomy of cognitive mismatches is defined, and the problem illustrated using an example from an aviation accident. Consideration is then given to how cognitive mismatches can be managed. A call is made for the development of an integrated cockpit architecture that takes better account of human capabilities and allows for new developments to be added to the cockpit in a more seamless manne

Towards a practical framework for managing the risks of selecting technology to support independent living

Information and communication technology applications can help increase the independence and quality of life of older people, or people with disabilities who live in their own homes. A risk management framework is proposed to assist in selecting applications that match the needs and wishes of particular individuals. Risk comprises two components: the likelihood of the occurrence of harm and the consequences of that harm. In the home, the social and psychological harms are as important as the physical ones. The importance of the harm (e.g., injury) is conditioned by its consequences (e.g., distress, costly medical treatment). We identify six generic types of harm (including dependency, loneliness, fear and debt) and four generic consequences (including distress and loss of confidence in ability to live independently). The resultant client-centred framework offers a systematic basis for selecting and evaluating technology for independent living

State misinterpretation in flight crew behaviour: an incident based analysis

State misinterpretation has been identified as a causal factor in several accidents where humans were operating complex systems in dynamic domains. The concept of state misinterpretation, although undefined, is characterised by its unobservability, and its relative infrequency. These features make gathering data about state misinterpretation difficult. It was therefore decided to use archive incident report data; the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System database was used. A definition of state misinterpretation was formulated and translated into database queries to retrieve relevant incident reports for a homogeneous set of expert pilots over a fixed time period. These reports were encoded using the Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method suitably adapted to analysis of aviation incidents. Each report was categorised by the type of state misinterpretation, and a taxonomy of these types was developed. Those types which occurred more than 20 times were analysed at three levels of abstraction. First, a concordance of individual actions showed that communication failures, missed observations and distractions were the most common causal factors. Second, the sequences of possible causal actions showed that some sequences are common across different types of error and state misinterpretation. Third, the causal trees for each state misinterpretation type were quantitatively compared. The lack of measured similarity between the trees suggests that the types in the taxonomy are distinct. Most of the analysed incidents were preventable by better management of flight crew actions. Two particular sequences of actions dominated the results. The first is where the flight crew missed an observation when they were distracted by a competing task. The second is where a communication failure between the flight crew and air traffic control occurred. Some suggestions are offered about how flight crews can better manage their actions to prevent the occurrence of some types of state misinterpretation, thereby reducing incident numbers

Migrating Software Products to the Cloud

Cloud computing, as a disruptive innovation, has the potential to adversely affect companies. The effects can be particularly extreme for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Subsequently, considerations of organisational resilience should be made when integrating with disruptive innovations like cloud computing. This paper reports of a longitudinal study investigating how a set of SME high-value software vendors are migrating their software products to the cloud. Adaptive socio-technical systems (ASTSs) concepts are used to provide a framework for understanding the adoption process. This study draws out a set of macro and micro themes relating to key phases of strategy development, the migration process and the impact on customer perceptions. From the findings, more systemic and holistic approaches are identified to address key tensions through the adoption life cycle while considering organisational resilience

Migrating software products to the cloud: an adaptive STS perspective.

Cloud computing, as a disruptive innovation, has the potential to adversely affect companies. The effects can be particularly extreme for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Subsequently, considerations of organisational resilience should be made when integrating with disruptive innovations like cloud computing. This paper reports of a longitudinal study investigating how a set of SME high-value software vendors are migrating their software products to the cloud. Adaptive socio-technical systems (ASTSs) concepts are used to provide a framework for understanding the adoption process. This study draws out a set of macro and micro themes relating to key phases of strategy development, the migration process and the impact on customer perceptions. From the findings, more systemic and holistic approaches are identified to address key tensions through the adoption life cycle while considering organisational resilience

Fixation and consensus times on a network: a unified approach

We investigate a set of stochastic models of biodiversity, population genetics, language evolution and opinion dynamics on a network within a common framework. Each node has a state, 0 < x_i < 1, with interactions specified by strengths m_{ij}. For any set of m_{ij} we derive an approximate expression for the mean time to reach fixation or consensus (all x_i=0 or 1). Remarkably in a case relevant to language change this time is independent of the network structure.Comment: 4+epsilon pages, two-column, RevTeX4, 3 eps figures; version accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Factors influencing community case management and care hours for clients with traumatic brain injury living in the UK

Objective: To investigate the relationship between deficits associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and case management (CM) and care/support (CS) in two UK community samples. Research design: Prospective descriptive study. Method: Case managers across the UK and from a single UK CM service contributed client profiles to two data sets (Groups 1 and 2, respectively). Data were entered on demographics, injury severity, functional skills, functional-cognition (including executive functions), behaviour and CM and CS hours. Relationships were explored between areas of disability and service provision. Results: Clients in Group 2 were more severely injured, longer post-injury and had less family support than clients in Group 1. There were few significant differences between Groups 1 and 2 on measures of Functionalskill, Functional-cognition and Behaviour disorder. Deficits in Functionalskills were associated with CS, but not CM. Deficits in measures of executive functions (impulsivity, predictability, response to direction) were related to CM, but not to CS. Insight was related to both CM and CS. Variables related to behaviour disorder were related to CM, but were less often correlated to CS. Conclusions: The need for community support is related not only to Functionalskills (CS), but also to behaviour disorder, self-regulatory skills and impaired insight (CM)

Hamiltonian Cycles on a Random Three-coordinate Lattice

Consider a random three-coordinate lattice of spherical topology having 2v vertices and being densely covered by a single closed, self-avoiding walk, i.e. being equipped with a Hamiltonian cycle. We determine the number of such objects as a function of v. Furthermore we express the partition function of the corresponding statistical model as an elliptic integral.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, 3 eps-figures, one reference adde

Interdependent binary choices under social influence: phase diagram for homogeneous unbiased populations

Coupled Ising models are studied in a discrete choice theory framework, where they can be understood to represent interdependent choice making processes for homogeneous populations under social influence. Two different coupling schemes are considered. The nonlocal or group interdependence model is used to study two interrelated groups making the same binary choice. The local or individual interdependence model represents a single group where agents make two binary choices which depend on each other. For both models, phase diagrams, and their implications in socioeconomic contexts, are described and compared in the absence of private deterministic utilities (zero opinion fields).Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Ana Fern\'andez del R\'io, Elka Korutcheva and Javier de la Rubia, Interdependent binary choices under social influence, Wiley's Complexity, 2012; which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21397/abstrac