Eder Henriqson

On the rationale of resilience in the domain of safety: A literature review

Resilience is becoming a prevalent agenda in safety research and organisational practice. In this study we examine how the peer-reviewed safety science literature (a) formulates the rationale behind the study of resilience; (b) constructs resilience as a scientific object; and (c) constructs and locates the resilient subject. The results suggest that resilience engineering scholars typically motivate the need for their studies by referring to the inherent complexities of modern socio-technical systems; complexities that make these systems inherently risky. The object of resilience then becomes the capacity to adapt to such emerging risks in order to guarantee the success of the inherently risky system. In the material reviewed, the subject of resilience is typically the individual, either at the sharp end or at higher managerial levels. The individual is called-upon to adapt in the face of risk to secure the continuous performance of the system. Based on the results from how resilience has been introduced in safety sciences we raise three ethical questions for the field to address: (1) should resilience be seen as people thriving despite of, or because of, risk?; (2) should resilience theory form a basis for moral judgement?; and finally (3) how much should resilience be approached as a trait of the individual?

Exploring the Use of Categories in the Assessment of Airline Pilots’ Performance as a Potential Source of Examiners’ Disagreement

It is a current trend in aviation to use categories of technical (e.g., knowledge) and nontechnical skills (e.g., situation awareness) to assess airline pilots’ performance. Several studies have revealed large disagreement between assessors when airline professionals use these categories to assess the performance of their peers. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the categories themselves are at the source of disagreement. We explore the reasoning of flight examiners who assess an engine fire scenario in pairs. The results provide insight into the overlap of topics that constitute certain categories. Implications are drawn in regards to the use of assessment categories and their influence on pilot performance assessment.

How a cockpit calculates its speeds and why errors while doing this are so hard to detect

Recent incidents have shown that the production of take-off speeds is an activity vulnerable to miscalculations with a potential for disastrous outcomes. The aim of this paper is to analyze the calculation of the take-off speeds in a modern airline cockpit as a distributed cognitive activity in order to identify possible vulnerabilities in this process. We took the cockpit as the joint cognitive system under analysis and conducted an ethnographic study based on documental analysis, flight observations, interviews, and the analysis of 22 events involving failures related to the calculation of take-off speeds. The main argument is that the cognitive systems engineering perspective, with less focus on the human contribution than it is common in investigations, levels people and artifacts in the system as equal contributors to its eventual performance. Our analysis identified four assertions regarding vulnerabilities in the process of take-off speeds calculation: (1) representations at the level of the cockpit are always partial and incomplete; (2) some interactions require interpretation rather than institution; (3) interactions of agents do not follow a canonical process of coordination; (4) the control of the prevention of failures is accurate but inadequate. These vulnerabilities are a matter of interactions among cognitive systems in the cockpit, rather than vulnerabilities of individual agents, such as humans or artifacts.

Team Coordination in Escalating Situations: An Empirical Study Using Mid-Fidelity Simulation

The performance of teams, with different levels of domain and crisis management experience, managing unexpected and escalating situations was observed using a mid-fidelity ship-bridge simulation and analysed by applying the central concepts of joint activity coordination as well as Woodss theory building on data overload. The coordination strategies used by the teams were evaluated by applying coordination process indicators and the concept of control. The paper discusses how different aspects of team coordination in unexpected and escalating situations, e.g. that teams that maintain a high level of control in escalating situations, avoid or minimize the effects of data overload by using explicit and agreed-upon goals rather than sharing as much incoming information as possible. The results presented in this paper show the benefits of applying a broad set of theoretical concepts to shed light on the actual demands that escalating situations pose on peoples data processing capacities and processes. It also provides guidance on the successful performance of teams in such situations and thus support for the development of successful strategies for their management.

The design of scenario-based training from the resilience engineering perspective: A study with grid electricians

Although scenario-based training (SBT) can be an effective means to help workers develop resilience skills, it has not yet been analyzed from the resilience engineering (RE) perspective. This study introduces a five-stage method for designing SBT from the RE view: (a) identification of resilience skills, work constraints and actions for re-designing the socio-technical system; (b) design of template scenarios, allowing the simulation of the work constraints and the use of resilience skills; (c) design of the simulation protocol, which includes briefing, simulation and debriefing; (d) implementation of both scenarios and simulation protocol; and (e) evaluation of the scenarios and simulation protocol. It is reported how the method was applied in an electricity distribution company, in order to train grid electricians. The study was framed as an application of design science research, and five research outputs are discussed: method, constructs, model of the relationships among constructs, instantiations of the method, and theory building. Concerning the last output, the operationalization of the RE perspective on three elements of SBT is presented: identification of training objectives; scenario design; and debriefing.

Situation awareness: some conditions of possibility

Situation awareness (SA) has become a ubiquitous object of knowledge in our discourses of human performance and accident explanation. Based on Michel Foucaults archaeological approach, in this paper, we examine SA by mapping the ‘conditions of possibility’ for this object to emerge. By highlighting the logic that SA builds upon, the political need that it intends to address, and the knowledges that delimitate it in its constitution, we aim to display the contingent nature of this object. Ultimately, we argue that as a discursive object, SA has effects.

How to assess team performance in terms of control: a protocol based on cognitive systems engineering

This article presents a protocol for assessing team performance in terms of control based on cognitive systems engineering theory. The protocol changes the focus of team performance assessment from good and bad behaviours towards team activity. By using Hollnagel’s contextual control model (COCOM), a protocol is developed so that team activity can be described as four control modes. Data is collected through observation and questionnaires and is analysed in time intervals. Each time interval is then given a control mode. Based on how the control mode changes over time, the performance of the team can be assessed. The protocol was tested in a pilot study where commanding staff exercises were analysed. The results show that the protocol can be used to identify differences in team performance. The study also gives empirical validity to COCOM in that the loss of control in emergencies corresponds to an opportunistic or a scrambled control mode.

Análise do campo conceitual da engenharia de sistemas cognitivos e proposta de uma nova agenda de pesquisa

This article aims to describe the evolution of the conceptual field of cognitive systems engineering (CSE), to discuss its epistemological foundations and to verify the coherence of CSE with the nature of the problems that are investigated. Toward this aim, this work presents a literature review of the historical development of CSE and characterizes five common approaches in CSE research. The results indicate that studies in CSE have, as a rule, assumed the individual or the technical system to be the unit of analysis, ignoring important opportunities in the investigation of the interactions among human, work, and artifacts. A new research agenda is proposed based on an analysis of three assumptions: a cognitive system should not be assumed to be a Cartesian-Newtonian machine, which has clear cause-and-effect relationships; a cognitive system cannot be modeled with precision and perfection; and the investigation of cognitive systems should focus on emergent phenomena related to the interactions among human, work, and technological artifacts.

Consciência situacional, tomada de decisão e modos de controle cognitivo em ambientes complexos

This work aims to analyze situation awareness, natural decision-making processes and cognitive control modes used by airplane pilots in a flight simulator experiment. In this way, different situations during flight simulation were considered in order to study the crew’s situation awareness and natural decisionmaking. The participants’ actions were investigated and classified according to the cognitive control model proposed. Results suggest that context complexity factors affect difficulty management, influencing situation awareness, decision-making and pilots’ cognitive control modes.