Shuchisnigdha Deb

Alarm fatigue and its influence on staff performance

An alarm is a warning of an approaching situation which requires a response. The Emergency Care Research Institute considered alarm hazard as the number one health technology hazard for the years 2012 through 2014. In response, The Joint Commission set a standard for all hospitals in the United States to assess alarm fatigue in their monitoring process and to develop a systematic, coordinated approach to clinical alarm system management. In order to comply with this requirement, a working definition of alarm fatigue is necessary. This observational study undertook the objective of defining alarm fatigue, measuring it and exploring its role in performance deterioration. A conceptual model was developed considering the significance of working conditions and staff individuality on alarm fatigue and, consequently, alarm fatigue on staff performance. The results show that in general, performance deterioration is actually influenced by a combination of alarm fatigue, working conditions and staff individuality. In fact, in the case of nurses and response time, alarm fatigue plays no role, only working conditions and staff individuality. These findings suggest that the role of alarm fatigue as a health hazard in the clinical environment should be reevaluated.

Evaluating pedestrian behavior at crosswalks: Validation of a pedestrian behavior questionnaire for the U.S. population

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a self-reporting Pedestrian Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ) for the U.S. population to measure frequency of risky behaviors among pedestrians. The PBQ includes 50 survey items that allow respondents to rate the frequency with which they engage in different types of road-using behaviors as pedestrians. The validation study was conducted on 425 participants (228 males and 197 females) between the ages of 18 and 71. Confirmatory factor analysis differentiated pedestrian behaviors into five factor categories: violations, errors, lapses, aggressive behaviors, and positive behaviors. A short version of the PBQ with 20 items was also created by selecting four items with high factor loadings from each of the five factor categories. Regression analyses investigated associations with scenario-based survey behavioral responses to validate the five-factor PBQ subscale scores and composite score. For both long and short versions, each of these five individual factor scales were found to be reliable (0.7<Cronbachs alpha (α)<0.9) and valid (significant association with p<0.0001), except in the case of positive behaviors (α<0.6) which requires further expansion. The effects of gender and age on the PBQ scores were investigated and found to be consistent with previous research. This PBQ can serve as an instrument of pedestrian self-assessment in educational and training contexts as well as can be useful to all researchers investigating pedestrian safety for all age groups.

Pedestrians receptivity in autonomous vehicles: Exploring a video-based assessment

Pedestrian receptivity toward autonomous vehicles (AVs) usually depends on the extent to which they receive indication of the vehicle’s intended action. Previous studies have typically used overt subjective measures (trust measures, ratings, etc.) and few objective measures (walking speed, waiting time, etc.) to identify external features that can improve pedestrians’ receptivity toward AVs. The current study aims to evaluate pedestrians’ behavioral measures of receptivity based on their body (head and foot) movements as they experience an AV in a virtual traffic environment. Videos of pedestrians at a virtual crosswalk, interacting with an AV that was equipped with an external feature indicating different operator statuses were coded. The operator statuses used in this study included: no driver, attentive driver, and distracted driver. The external features used were: no feature, upraised hand, stop sign, walking silhouette, walk in text, music, and a verbal message. Pedestrian body movements were derived from the video to determine frequency for looking at the approaching vehicle while crossing and stops after initiating crossing. Average durations for initiating crossing after signal were calculated. For no feature condition, the waiting time was calculated when participants observed the car. Data were compared with pedestrians’ self-reported ratings for receptivity to investigate body movements’ sensitivity to participants’ receptivity level. Results suggest body movements are sensitive to individual differences in reported receptivity. Future work should further examine the utility of this behavioral metric by further examining situational differences.

Pedestrian Perception of Autonomous Vehicles with External Interacting Features

The increasing number of autonomous vehicles has raised questions regarding pedestrian interaction with autonomous vehicles. Researchers have studied external interfaces designed for vehicle operators and other road-users (e.g., pedestrians). Most past studies have considered the interaction between pedestrians and autonomous vehicles with no visible operator. However, pedestrian-autonomous vehicle interaction may be complicated when there is a human sitting in the conventional driver’s seat of an autonomous vehicle. Such a scenario may cause some pedestrians to look to the passenger for cues when they should be looking for cues from the vehicle. The objective of the current study was to investigate pedestrians’ perspective of autonomous vehicles based on the interaction effect between passenger status and external features on the vehicle. Sixteen pedestrians completed a VR experiment. The results provided important insight into the important question of pedestrian-autonomous vehicle interaction when passengers are present in the driver seat of the vehicle.

Development of an Effective Pedestrian Simulator for Research

According to the US Department of Transportation, in 2013 14 % of all traffic fatalities were pedestrians. In Japan, 38.4 % of 2015 traffic fatalities were pedestrians. Studying pedestrian behavior is an important step in preventing pedestrian fatalities on the road. However, to investigate pedestrian behavior, several factors need to be considered. First and foremost, the safety of the participants must be assured. Second, the study environment needs to be controlled to prevent confounding variables and allow for repeated trials. Finally, the costs to develop and perform the study must also be minimized. To address these obstacles, we propose the implementation of a virtual reality (VR)-based simulator for studies of behavior and task performance with full motion. This simulator is composed of a Unity 5 environment, Oculus Rift VR headset, and Kinect or motion capture based position tracking. In this paper, we will discuss the development of the simulator, limitations, and future work.

Global differences in industrial handheld device preference

One of the major concerns in managing a global organisation is the potential difficulty that could arise due to different cultural preferences for technologies. This study provides evidence that cultural difference can influence ruggedised handheld device design preference. Field workers from different world regions of a worldwide service company responded to a survey expressing their choices on four potential handheld devices, five available features, and on the most influencing feature. The region of the world from which the workers were domiciled was impactful and showed significant influence on device selection as well as on all of the feature preferences.