This book presents an exhaustive review and evaluation of contemporary theoretical perspectives on SA and of a range of SA measurement approaches. A novel theory of DSA in complex sociotechnical systems is presented, followed by an original methodology for assessing SA and DSA in command and control environments. It contains several naturalistic case studies of command and control scenarios undertaken in numerous military domains, as well as one involving multiple high-consequence civilian domains.
The ideas of this book originate from the mobile WAVE approach which allowed us, more than a half century ago, to implement citywide heterogeneous computer networks and solve distributed problems on them well before the internet. The invented paradigm evolved into Spatial Grasp Technology and resulted in a European patent and eight books. The volumes covered concrete applications in graph and network theory, defense and social systems, crisis management, simulation of global viruses, gestalt theory, collective robotics, space research, and related concepts. The obtained solutions often exhibited high system qualities like global integrity, distributed awareness, and even consciousness. This current book takes these important characteristics as primary research objectives, together with the theory of patterns covering them all. This book is oriented towards system scientists, application programmers, industry managers, defense and security commanders, and university students (especially those interested in advanced MSc and PhD projects on distributed system management), as well as philosophers, psychologists, and United Nations personnel.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management in Mediterranean Countries, ISCRAM‐med 2015, held in Tunis, Tunisia, in October 2015. The objectives of the ISCRAM‐med conference are to provide an outstanding opportunity and an international forum for local and international researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to address and discuss new trends and challenges with respect to information systems for crisis response and disaster management. The 14 full papers and 4 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on social computing, modeling and simulation, information and knowledge management, engineering of emergency management systems, and decision support systems and collaboration.
A potentially troubling aspect of modern vehicle design – some would argue - is a trend for isolating the driver and reducing vehicle feedback, usually in the name of comfort and refinement but increasingly because of automation. There is little doubt cars have become more civilised over the years, yet despite this, the consequences of driver behaviour remain to a large extent anecdotal. Readers will have heard such anecdotes for themselves. They usually take the form of drivers of a certain age recalling their first cars from the 1970s or 80s, in which "doing 70 mph really felt like it". The question is whether such anecdotes actually reflect a bigger, more significant issue that could be better understood. Related questions have been explored in other domains such as aviation, where the change to ‘fly-by-wire’ did indeed bring about some occasionally serious performance issues that were not anticipated. Despite some clear parallels, automotive systems have been left relatively unstudied. The research described in this book aims to explore precisely these issues from a Human Factors perspective. This means connecting the topics of vehicle feel, vehicle dynamics, and automotive engineering with the latest research on driver situation awareness. The problem is explored experimentally from a variety of theoretical viewpoints but the outcomes are consistently practical. Here we have a promising new avenue along which the driver experience can be enhanced in novel and insightful ways. Tools and templates are provided so that engineers and designers can try different ways to boost vehicle safety, efficiency and enjoyment from a human-centered perspective. Association of American Publishers (AAP) Finalist for the 2019 PROSE Award Features Diagnosis of how vehicle feel impacts driver situation awareness, and how this could aid future vehicle designs Multi-theory approach to driver situation awareness, and how different views of this important concept give rise to different insights Comprehensive analysis of situation awareness in driving, the information requirements of drivers, and how these needs can be supported Practical descriptions of how state-of-science Human Factors methods have been applied in practice
"This book provide a comprehensive view of current developments in agent organizations as a paradigm for both the modeling of human organizations, and for designing effective artificial organizations"--Provided by publisher.
This book presents a human factors and ergonomics evaluation of a digital Mission Planning and Battle-space Management (MP/BM) system. An emphasis was placed on the activities at the Brigade (Bde) and the Battle Group (BG) headquarters (HQ) levels. The analysts distributed their time evenly between these two locations. The human factors team from Brunel University, as part of the HFI DTC, undertook a multi-faceted approach to the investigation, including: - observation of people using the traditional analogue MP/BM processes in the course of their work - cognitive work analysis of the digital MP/BM system - analysis of the tasks and goal structure required by the digital MP/BM - assessment against a usability questionnaire - analysis of the distributed situation awareness - an environmental survey. The book concludes with a summary of the research project's findings and offers many valuable insights. For example, the recommendations for short-term improvements in the current generation of digital MP/BM system address general design improvements, user-interface design improvements, hardware improvements, infrastructure improvements and support improvements. In looking forward to the next generation digital MP/BM systems, general human factors design principles are presented and human factors issues in digitising mission planning are considered.
This book provides an overview of state-of-the-art research that has been conducted within Australia, funded by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre. The chapters source and contextualize their own research practice within the context of the international research literature. Therefore, while the research has occurred within Australia it will be of particular interest to scholars, students and practitioners in a number of other countries, particularly within the United States of America and in Europe. The fire and emergency services is a particularly large industry - in Australia alone it employs 250,000 personnel - yet there is very little by way of published human factors books addressing this sector directly. Emergency events frequently involve problems for which there may be unanticipated consequences and highly interdependent consequential effects. In short, emergency events are not necessarily as containable as may be work in other domains. As Karl Weick once commented, emergency events do not 'play by the rules'. This means that these research chapters tell us something about a potential future world of work that is highly dynamic, interdependent and for which improvisation and critical thinking and problem-solving are necessary pre-requisites. The discussions about individual and team performance will also be pertinent to others working in similar high-reliability, high-consequence domains. The chapters connect into an integrated body of work about individual and group performance and their limitations.
Enhancing Situation Awareness (SA) is a major design goal for projects in many fields, including aviation, ground transportation, air traffic control, nuclear power, and medicine, but little information exists in an integral format to support this goal. Designing for Situation Awareness helps designers understand how people acquire and interpret information in complex settings and recognize the factors that undermine this process. Designing to support operator SA reduces the incidence of human error, which has been found to occur largely due to failures in SA. Whereas many previous human factors efforts have focused on design at the perceptual and surface feature level, SA-oriented design focuses on the operator's information needs and cognitive processes as they juggle to integrate information from many sources and achieve multiple competing goals. Thus it addresses design from a system's perspective. By applying theoretical and empirical information on SA to the system design process, human factors practitioners can create designs to support SA across a wide variety of domains and design issues. This book serves as a helpful reference to that end.
A comprehensive overview of different approaches to the measurement of situation awareness in experimental and applied setting, this book directly tackles the problem of ensuring that system designs and training programs are effective at promoting situation awareness. It is the first book to provide a all-inclusive coverage of situation awareness and its measurement. Topics addressed provide a detailed analysis of the use of a wide variety of techniques for measuring situation awareness and situation assessment processes. It provides a rich resource for engineers and human factors psychologists involved in designing and evaluating systems in many domains.
In 2000, the Conference on Automation joined forces with a partner group on situation awareness (SA). The rising complexity of systems demands that one can be aware of a large range of environmental and task-based stimulation in order to match what is done with what has to be done. Thus, SA and automation-based interaction fall naturally together and this conference is the second embodiment of this union. Moving into the 21st century, further diversification of the applications of automation will continue--for example, the revolution in genetic technology. Given the broad nature of this form of human-machine interaction, it is vital to apply past lessons to map a future for the symbiotic relationship between humans and the artifacts they create. It is as part of this ongoing endeavor that the present volume is offered.
