Human Factors Arch Lab Rap

Excellent and humorous music video on human factors and ergonomics.

Thanks Arch Lab! 🙂

Need for speed

Training and qualification for HSC watercraft operations

Earlier this year we had an article published at the Fast Patrol and Interception Craft Conference.

Introduction

Where are the gaps when it comes to training crews operating High Speed Craft? How can the dangers be mitigated through enhanced training methodologies? And what is preventing military forces from working together as effectively as possible? We asked the experts…

 

 

Please download full article here: Need For Speed.

 

Kind regards

/Fredrik Forsman

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New Article in Maritime Journal on DYNAV Manager course

I am glad to see that the Maritime Journal has an article on next course in Dynamic Navigation (DYNAV) held by FRC-INT 3-5th December, Southampton.

Please read more at Maritime journal.

 

Small Craft Emergency Response and Survival Training for Arctic Conditions

Another nice article at Shock Mittigation Directory on a project we are running called SMACS – Small Craft Emergency Response and Survival Training for Arctic Conditions.

The primary objective of the SMACS project is the development of a safety and survival training programme specifically focused on the needs of small-craft Arctic mariners. It is currently difficult to access Arctic-specific small-craft training and the aim of the project is to address this problem.

Read more at Shock Mitigation Directory or visit SMACS-project.eu.

 

Dissemination of research in high speed navigation – DYNAV

Just recently we held a course
in high speed navigation safety aimed for managers of organizations who work with small and fast boats. The perspective is that to be able to make sound and good decisions about crew and boats one need to understand the circumstance man have to cope with onboard. Too often the human in the system is forgotten and not knowing how humans function under adverse conditions is a common culprit. Even though the picture is from practical training this course was based on simulations and lectures. Please read more at Shock Mitigation Directory.

 

kind regards
/Fredrik

On boxing, free will and rules.

In today’s paper I read about the Swedish professional boxer Frida Wallberg who after a TKO in a professional boxing fight is in very bad condition. gp.se claims Frida is suffering from what they call cerebral hemorrhage and she underwent surgery at a hospital in Stockholm.

My thoughts are with Frida and I wish her a quick recovery, nevertheless I want to elaborate a couple of thoughts on safety and free will.

Boxing as a sport is to some extent hazardous in its nature. The aim is to cause damage to your opponent. The very specific word used for boxing matches is the word fight. Thefreedictionary.com defines fight as:

1. To attempt to harm or gain power over an adversary by blows or with weapons.
2. Sports To engage in boxing or wrestling.

This says something about the nature of boxing.

One thing I find peculiar is that there was another fight that started after that Frida had been injured. Imagine this as an accident at work. Then the Protection Officer probably should have stopped operations  to take precautions in order to avoid the accident from happening again. Especially if there were more work to be conducted of exactly the same sort.

Professional boxing is an occupation by definition but there seem to be another standard when it comes to occupational health and safety.

One can argue that the boxers know the risks and are aware of the conditions. It is their own choice. But what risks are we prepared to take within our society? It is against the law to drive your car unbuckled.  Here society has made a statement that you will be punished if you violate a rule which sole purpose is the protection of the individual. The seat belt is an example of paternalism but when does paternalism counter act its fundamental purpose of the greater good?

My intention is not to moralize about boxing but Fridas unfortunat accident made me come to reason a bit about rules, paternalism and safety.

In the context were I am, safety is of great importance. Safety probably is one of the fundamental values of the society I live in. The major trends to enhance safety in many cases are to introduce rules and regulations. There is no question about the greate progress that has come thanks to this development. On the other hand there are no free lunches. With a lot more rules and regulations the room for adaptation is decreasing and this might be a new risk in it self. The irony is that the more complex society grows the more we must rely on adaptations to be able to succeed under various conditions and to then answer with more constraints doesn’t seem as the wisest way.

I don’t think rules and regulations or paternalism is the sole answer. Depending on the values and priorities in the society in question safety might not even be desired and thus the question must first be understood from that perspective. Or else it we might impose a system on a group of people that is apart from their culture. This argumentation can be seen as a bit apart  it selves but when we are boiling it down to the law of use of seat belt and if professional boxing should be allowed it is in its place.

Another perspective is that man has a free will and is thus responsible for her own actions and should be free to make her own decisions. But when the impact is a lot more people killed in traffic by not using the belt, should it then be up to the end user to make that decision? One might have made a conscious choice to sacrifice some safety in trade for comfort.

Not many would argue against the law of using seat belt but there are many more risks that might be reduced by paternalism, rules and regulations. How do we find the point of balance, when are we enough safe but still free to make our own choices? The choises that constitute the ability to adapt.

Comments are as always very welcome!

/Fredrik Forsman

Success factors in High speed navigation

What are the factors that constitute success in high speed navigation at sea?

Recently we conducted a trial at Memorial University of Newfoundland where we put 32 Subject Matter Experts through four navigational scenarios. The trial was conducted in a simulator with 360 degrees of visual channels projected on a screen and the cockpit attached to a motion bed with six degrees of freedom.

Without having had a moment to analyze the data collected I must say, from a personal opinion, that adding good motion to a simulation really increases the immersion. During our trials we were pretty moderate with adding to much waves and thus motion to the simulation when we weren’t sure on the effects. Nevertheless, a very subtle movement of the consoles stimulates all our tactile sensors and our balance. This becomes very apparent in turns. The motion-bed rotates the platform with the cockpit on up to about 40 degrees which gives a very vivid impression of turning. And when one is going from turning to go straight again the motion-bed then rotates back to its normal position again which also feels very realistic.

From a trainer’s point of view, the added motion probably opens up for many new kinds of skill development that isn’t possible without motion. Even though the simulator in its present form can’t simulate wakes from other ships boarding seems very realistic. It is a cool sensation when the simulator actually is providing me with a realistic “bump” sideways when I did hit the other vessel in the boarding process.

Now, our trial wasn’t mainly about evaluating simulation or look at its potential application in training but it hard not to write about it when it makes you that exited that I got about it.

Visit from CBC news during the trials

What we did look for was success factors in navigation. Our thesis is that preplanning or feed-forward is key factors of success. That proactive behavior is safer and more efficient then reactive behavior. I guess some of you might argue that those ideas are old news and maybe they are. What we want to do is too look at them from Resilience point of view and hopefully be able to quantify them in terms of control. We have a lot of work to be done before we can say anything about this.

Jenifer Smith at the controls

I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the reductionist way of looking of men is widespread. Human error or unsafe acts are all too often attributed as the root cause of accidents. The notion of causes and especially root causes seems to be a crude simplification in a society witch actually is the embodiment and the very essence of complexity. Things that happen sometimes can be explained and rarely have simple causes. On top of that we have the notion of  human error. In order to be able to talk on terms of error there must exist an alternative and that are correct actions. I am then curious, what are these correct actions and how are they defined? From a reductionist point of view human error is limited or avoided if human performance can be kept in a predefined envelope. This might be true if we were machines with no or very little variability in our everyday performance. But we can’t be limited to a mechanistic model of function that can be controlled and guided by a strict set of rules and procedures.

When it comes to more advanced tasks that requires sharp end users to be skilled or possess expertise, this becomes more obvious. In our case we are interested in navigation in challenging waters with lot of islands and underwater rocks. Add to that the mission of Search and Rescue and the uncertainties start to pile up. Is it possible to obtain control in such situation by a constraining the operators behaviour? I think not. Different tasks in different situations calls for a diversity of control mechanisms. The operators need to be able to adapt to the situation to maintain safety and get the mission done.

Rules and procedures are a key factor to team performance but they can only be of assistance in situations that has been thought of in advanced. The problem is that it is impossible to think of everything in advance and if that was possible and if one wrote procedures for everything there would never be time to use them because of their sheer mass.

All our participants performed subjectively well. They all managed to handle all the challenges we put them through. On a superficial level they seem to do it differently but I suspect that there are generic skills that they have developed independently from each other and I suspect that preplanning and adaptability are example on those.

It shall be interesting to see what we have captured in the trials. Will we find proof for out thesis or not? Will we be able to look at the data without bias, without the coloured glasses we are wearing weather we want it or not?

I would like to thank Professor Scott MacKinnon for making this experiment possible and my fantastic colleagues at Memorial University of Newfoundland: Jennifer Smith, Patrick Linehan and Matt Miné-Goldring.

All comments are valuable, please do speak your mind!

Kind regards
/Fredrik Forsman

Icelanders

Iceland, a volcano rock in mid Atlantic just below the polar circle with active volcanos and almost no growth season at all; how can man thrive at such a place?

I am amazed over the fact that despite the extremely harsh conditions the society seems to be well organized and well maintained. I could go into this with a political point of view but I deliberately want to avoid that. Maybe that is a mistake but then it can be a topic of forthcoming reflections. Instead, what constitutes being an islander? Are there any similarities between islanders in general? Here in Sweden we have many small communities spread along the coastline in the archipelago. They are rest from a time when the fishing and agriculture was the base for survival and income. The sea was the natural choice for transportation and societies grew around the transport routes and where fishing and sheltered harbors coincided.

I reckon that we, to a pretty large extent, are spoiled compared with our ancestors living just a couple of generations ago. In the age of abundance we no longer are that dependent of each other that we used to be. Especially in the urban community people are more or less self-sustain and to some extent lost in a large efficient and anonymizing system. We still depend on one and each other but we don’t need to know our neighbor any more. The social system takes care of us and the culture have changed from seeking contact to avoid it. The urban citizen takes her responsibility in the society by going to work, paying tax and obeying the law and in the same time maybe has lost what still can be seen at islanders; the personal caring for the person next door.

At an island one is more exposed not only to the powers of weather and conditions of the sea, the support-frame the urban citizen can trust in isn’t as strong in those locations. This might make islanders more dependent on each other than the urban citizen might be. The personal care for third person is a vital function for small coastal communities in the islands where one can’t put as much trust in any outsider to come with assistance.

From what I have seen an islander’s first identity is to be an islander and nothing else. Work, hockey team or voluntary engagement is maybe not even second or third but fourth identity.

Can it be that Icelanders have a lot in common with other islanders in general and one of the explanations in why Iceland is doing so well can be found in their general identity as islanders? Then it becomes a question of culture, a collective responsibility for the wealth of the people in the community. I think this touch upon Rochlins thoughts about the importance of agency, collective responsibility, when it comes to create safety within systems. But to create safety one need to have a defined goal and the goal itself might be just agency witch might be embodied in, and the essence of being an islander.

/Fredrik Forsman