Defining the methodological challenges and opportunities for an effective science of sociotechnical systems and safety

An important part of the application of sociotechnical systems theory (STS) is the development of methods, tools and techniques to assess human factors and ergonomics workplace requirements. We focus in this paper on describing and evaluating current STS methods for workplace safety, as well as outlining a set of six case studies covering the application of these methods to a range of safety contexts. We also describe an evaluation of the methods in terms of ratings of their ability to address a set of theoretical and practical questions (e.g. the degree to which methods capture static/dynamic aspects of tasks and interactions between system levels). The outcomes from the evaluation highlight a set of gaps relating to the coverage and applicability of current methods for STS and safety (e.g. coverage of external influences on system functioning; method usability). The final sections of the paper describe a set of future challenges, as well as some practical suggestions for tackling these. Practitioner Summary: We provide an up-to-date review of STS methods, a set of case studies illustrating their use and an evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses. The paper concludes with a ‘roadmap’ for future work

Ergonomic vs. ergonomics: acknowledging the etymology

Ergonomic vs. ergonomics: acknowledging the etymolog

Riding the emotional roller-coaster: Using the circumplex model of affect to model motorcycle riders’ emotional state-changes at intersections

This study uses Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect to examine whether motorcycle rider emotion is contingent on the environment and behavior. If it is contingent then it becomes predictable. If it is predictable it becomes potentially usable for innovating new ways to improve the safety and utility of this important transport mode. Eighteen motorcyclists took part in a 15km on-road study during which they were videoed, tracked via GPS, and followed by a ‘chase vehicle’ as they negotiated intersections, all the while providing a concurrent verbal commentary. The verbal commentary was content analysed using a novel method for mapping the verbalized emotional themes to the Circumplex Model. Network analysis was then used to explore the state changes between affective zones in the model. Riders’ emotions at intersections were found to vacillate between negative and positive affect, demonstrating high degrees of emotional dynamism. Many of these transitions occur in and out of the dominant positive state of calmness, with non-calm states appearing to be aversive and those which riders were seeking to avoid. Knowing this brings forward interesting new approaches for safe intersection design

Modelling driver decision-making at railway level crossings using the abstraction decomposition space

The objective of this paper is to cast users of railway level crossings as fexible and adaptive decision-makers, and to apply a cognitive systems engineering approach to discover new behaviour-based insights for improving safety. Collisions between trains and road vehicles at railway level crossings/grade crossings remain a global issue. It is still far from apparent why drivers undertake some of the behaviours that lead to collisions, and there remains considerable justifcation for continuing to explore this issue with novel methods and approaches. In this study, 220 level crossing encounters by 22 car drivers were subject to analysis. Concurrent verbal protocols provided by drivers as they drove an instrumented vehicle around a predefned route were subject to content analysis and mapped onto Rasmussen’s Abstraction Decomposition Space. Three key results emerged. First, when they realise they are in a crossing environment, drivers’ natural tendencies are to look for trains (even if not required), slow down (again, even if not required), and for their behaviour to be shaped by a wide variety of constraints and afordances (some, but not all, put there for that purpose by railway authorities). The second result is that expert decision-making in these situations does not describe a trajectory from high-level system purposes to low-level physical objects. Instead, drivers remain at intermediate and lower levels of system abstraction, with many loops and iterations. The fnal fnding is that current level crossing systems are inadvertently constraining some desirable behaviours, afording undesirable ones, and that unexpected system elements are driving behaviour in ways not previously considered. Railway level crossings need to be designed to reveal their functional purpose much more efectively than at present