Robert J. de Boer

The Duration of Automation Bias in a Realistic Setting

Whereas in most studies conducted previously the effect of automation bias has been investigated in terms of an instantaneous decision, this study is aimed at quantifying its duration. Automation bias is modeled as a stochastic process using a unimodal log-log probability distribution. To validate the model, an experiment using an Airbus A320 fixed-base flight simulator with a malfunction on the auto-throttle was executed with 35 licensed pilots. The effect of pilot experience is investigated; results show that less experienced pilots are on average less sensitive to automation bias but have more variation in performance than more experienced pilots.

Safety Culture Development : The Gap Between Industry Guidelines and Literature, and the Differences Amongst Industry Sectors.

Reason’s typology of safety culture (i.e. Just, Informative, Learning, Flexible and Reporting cultures) is widely used in the industry and academia. Through literature review we developed a framework including 36 markers that reflect the operationalization of Reason’s sub-cultures and general organizational prerequisites. We used the framework to assess to what extent safety culture development guidelines of seven industry sectors (i.e. aviation, railway, oil and gas, nuclear, healthcare, defense and maritime) incorporate academic references, and are similar to each other. Gap analysis and statistics showed that the guidelines include 53–69 % of the safety culture markers, with significant differences across subcultures and industry sectors. The results suggested that there is a gap between the industry guidelines and literature, as well as variant approaches to safety culture across the industry. The framework suggested in the study might be used as reference for completing existing safety culture development plans and constructing safety culture assessment instruments.

Interaction Between Emotions and Mental Models in Engineering and Design Activities

The objective of this chapter is to describe the interaction between emotions and the preservation of ideas in engineering and design activities. Johnson-Laird’s mental model construct of internal representations is utilized to define cognitive resistance. A description of the interaction between emotions and cognitive resistance is presented. A value function that forecasts a subject’s behavior when confronted with stimuli that are contradictory to his mental model is derived from a reinforcement learning framework. An experimental study has been conducted to validate the theory. The relevant results, confirming the predictions of the value function, are presented.

Safety Metrics Based on Utilisation of resources

The objective of the study described in this paper is to define safety metrics that are based on the utilisation of resources. The background of this research is a specific need of the aviation industry where small and medium-sized enterprises lack large amounts of safety-related data to measure and demonstrate their safety performance proactively. The research department of the Aviation Academy has initiated a 4-year study, which will test the possibility to develop new safety indicators that will be able to represent safety levels proactively without the benefit of large data sets. The research team has reviewed the academic and professional literature about safety performance indicators and has performed surveys into 13 companies in order to explore what, how, and why safety performance indicators are used and whether there is a statistically linear relation between SMS process metrics and safety outcomes. The preliminary results showed that companies do not use data from all SMS processes in the development of safety performance indicators, they do not ground the selection of indicators on specific criteria, they implement SMS process in different ways, but they are eager to use alternative metrics, including ones potentially to be derived on the basis of contemporary safety models and views. As part of the development of alternative safety metrics, safety performance indicators were defined that are based on the difference between required resources and available resources. Resources are people, time, equipment and budget. This work is inspired by the general notion that a large gap between ‘work as imagined’ and ‘work as done’ has a negative influence on the level of safety. Work as imagined in this context is represented by available resources and work as done by required resources. The metrics were defined by a combination of literature research and semi-structured interviews with operational practitioners in the aviation industry. The suitability of the metrics will subsequently be tested in pilot studies within the aviation industry.

Meeting report: The 3rd European STAMP Workshop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Traditional system safety approaches are being challenged by the introduction of new technology and the increasing complexity of the systems we build and operate. System Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) is a new systems thinking approach that w as introduced in Nancy Leveson’s book “Engineering a Safer World” (MIT Press, 2012). While relatively new, the STAMP approach and its respective tools and methods are already being used in many industry sectors such as space, aviation, automotive, software, security medical, defence and nuclear. In more than 150 published articles, the potential of the STAMP family of tools to identify more hazards and causal factors than traditional tools (e.g, FTA, HAZOP, FMEA) has been demonstrated...