José Carvalhais

Determinants of sleepiness at work among railway control workers

In the last two decades the control of the Portuguese railway network has become much more centralized in three centres, there integrating the functions of route flow management, electrical control and signalling. This study aimed to investigate the influence of work and individual determinants in sleepiness among railway control workers, namely socio-demographic factors, work ability, psychosocial factors, shiftwork characteristics, fatigue perception, and sleep. Sleepiness by shift was associated with quality of sleep, job satisfaction, fatigue perception, quantitative demands, and age. The results indicate a high prevalence of sleepiness during the night shift and show the relevance of the quality of sleep as a predictor in the three models of sleepiness for morning, afternoon and night shifts. This study, done at the major Portuguese railway control centre, alerted managers to the importance of schedule planning as well as sleepiness prevention plans and makes these results a reference for future research.

Applications and Interface Requirements to Engage the Citizens to Share Information in a Smart City Project

Today the cities are faced with new challenges provoked by the displacement of population to the urban areas. Cities have started to find for information and communication technologies solutions that enable high-quality and more efficient urban services. In this context, this study aims to propose a strategy to create the interfaces for a project related with smart cities. Considering that an interface acceptance by the users is important for its success, we develop a survey based in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM and adapted TAM2) and Motivational Model (MM), to understand their preferences to use different types of interfaces. The sample consisted of 225 Portuguese (107 male and 118 female, min = 18; max = 65 years old. The main results show the age is an important factor concerning their interface preferences and motivations to share information. These results demonstrate the need to develop different applications, one for younger adults that integrate all services and several applications for older adults, grouping one or more services, with different interfaces and rewards mechanisms.

Explaining Senior Drivers’ Road Near Misses Using Both Self-reported and Automatic Collected Data

This paper reports on part of the French MEDOC Project that was supported by Foundation MAIF, Paris, France [grant number RP4-F14140]. The main goal of this project was to understand near miss situations using both objective and subjective methods for data collection: the vehicle dynamics and registered driver’s actions; and the self-reported conditions that led to the occurrence and self-reported road users’ actions to avoid an accident. The collected data allowed for comparing reported ones. The project involved a total of 154 drivers. However, this paper just addresses the group of 27 older drivers. Although older drivers are generally considered safe and cautious drivers, age-related perceptual and cognitive declines might have an impact on self-perception of their own abilities and behavior leading some of them to be under or over-estimators, which will influence their perception of any sudden event. Thus, this study is important to compare their self-reports with the collected data from sensors.

Training Ergonomists in Portugal: 32 Years of Experience

Ergonomics in Portugal as an undergraduate university course started in 1985, at the Faculty of Human Kinetics (FMH). During the last 32 years, changes have been introduced. Since 2007 the length of the course and rearrangement of the contents suffered modifications determined by the Bologna Agreement. Aiming at characterizing the profession, two questionnaires were applied to ergonomists. The first questionnaire was applied by FMH to a sample of 48 ergonomists and the second questionnaire was applied by the Portuguese Association (APERGO) to 43 ergonomists. Regarding the need of ergonomists in Portugal the prevalent opinion is that more ergonomists are and will be needed. Most of the ergonomists develop their work activity in the domain of Ergonomics (60.47%) and/or Health and Safety at work (55.8%). The Services sector (53.5%) is the main sector of activity for more than half of the sample. Industry (30.2%) and Education/Training (20.93%) are other sectors more represented. During the last years of economic crisis the training of ergonomists in Portugal has been questioned based on its costs. However, new demands are emerging and ergonomists will be needed in the future.

Irregular working hours and fatigue of cabin crew.

BACKGROUND Beyond workload and specific environmental factors, flight attendants can be exposed to irregular working hours, conflicting with their circadian rhythms and having a negative impact in sleep, fatigue, health, social and family life, and performance which is critical to both safety and security in flight operations. OBJECTIVE This study focuses on the irregular schedules of cabin crew as a trigger of fatigue symptoms in a wet lease Portuguese airline. The aim was to analyze: what are the requirements of the cabin crew work; whether the schedules being observed and effective resting timeouts are triggering factors of fatigue; and the existence of fatigue symptoms in the cabin crew. METHODS A questionnaire has been adapted and applied to a sample of 73 cabin crew-members (representing 61.9% of the population), 39 females and 34 males, with an average age of 27.68 ± 4.27 years. RESULTS Our data indicate the presence of fatigue and corresponding health symptoms among the airline cabin crew, despite of the sample favorable characteristics. Senior workers and women are more affected. CONCLUSIONS Countermeasures are required. Recommendations can be made regarding the fatigue risk management, including work organization, education and awareness training programmes and specific countermeasures.

Ergonomics: Humans in the Centre of Innovation

Human-centred design of innovative systems in the field of Transports is crucial for safety and efficiency issues. For utilitarian or working purposes, a system is designed and developed in such a way it should fit the human characteristics and the function it is designed for. Even automatic and complex systems are controlled by people, meaning that their features should be integrated from the design phases until the implementation and functioning in order to ensure a well succeeded life cycle. The value of the contribution of Ergonomics to fit systems and tasks to human is well recognised, particularly concerning the physical features of humans and machines. However, technological development and innovation are bringing about new problems and, consequently, new research needs. Actually, the main research questions related to the human interaction with modern and complex systems focus on the human information processing and cognitive functioning, stressing decision making, attention, mental workload and fatigue, which are responsible for the success of any task performance but could compromise the expected results and safety. The study of human activity and behaviour allows us to understand human diversity and variability, the instability of the human activity over time, due to fatigue, health, ageing, etc., as well as the evolution of human expertise and people’s motivation and commitment in their tasks performance. This article will focus on these new research questions applied to the field of TRANSPORTS, where the main technological innovation is represented by the introduction of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Ongoing and recently carried out projects will be referred to frame and explain the following research topics: the cognitive resources in performing additional tasks to driving, fatigue and drowsiness in driving and in traffic control rooms, as well as ITS and special needs of older drivers.

Job Organization Centred on Task Variability: Small Assembly Lines to Prevent Musculoskeletal Disorders

Typical industrial assembly lines with repetitive work have increasing rates of musculoskeletal disorders. Work organization centered on small lines and providing a larger set of tasks by operator is a possible solution to prevent this problem. The aim of this study was the ergonomic evaluation of two small radio assembly lines compared with the traditional one. The results are very promising for the new line models.