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The goal of Human Performance Modeling is to develop predictive modeling capabilities to identify error vulnerabilities in human-system operations. Human-error assessment methodologies that allow system designs and procedures to be analyzed for error susceptibility are being developed and validated. Modeling efforts have analyzed the impacts of operations including: Approach and landing scenarios with augmented displays (Synthetic Vision Systems); NextGen Closely Spaced Parallel Approaches (CSPA); and, Single-Pilot Operations (SPO).
Human performance modeling using fast-time simulation offers a powerful technique to examine human interactions with existing and proposed aviation systems across an unlimited range of possible operating conditions. It provides a flexible and economical way to manipulate aspects of the task-environment, the equipment and procedures, and the human for simulation analyses. In particular, modeling and simulation analyses can suggest the nature of likely pilot errors, as well as highlight precursor conditions to error such as high levels of memory demand, mounting time pressure and workload, attentional tunneling or distraction, and deteriorating situational awareness. Fast-time modeling permits the generation of very large sample sizes from which low-rate-of-occurrence events are more likely to be revealed. An additional advantage associated with the use of human performance modeling includes the ability to propose and evaluate display and procedural changes. This is especially useful in that these evaluations of proposed changes can be done early in the design cycle, without the need to fabricate expensive prototype hardware. Finally, the careful characterization and formal thinking of the assumptions and processes involved in the problem, can, by itself, lead the modeler to gain new insights into system development and usage.
Thus, human-in-the-loop testing (HITL) with off-nominal scenarios and human performance modeling (HPM) techniques are two powerful tools that when coupled together provide a much more powerful approach towards the development of error-tolerant, human-centered, system designs. This approach can lead to a detailed understanding of operator performance, provide insight into the root causes of human error, and determine conditions of latent error, in which system design conditions, if left unchecked, may lead the operator to make errors. Such an approach during the design or re-design phases of a system will produce systems that are safer, more efficiently used by the operator, more robust to error and inadvertent misuse, and more likely to bridge the gap when moving from a laboratory prototype to a fielded, operational system.
Human-Centered Systems Laboratory (HCSL) human performance modeling efforts have analyzed the impacts of NextGen operations and technologies including: Approach and landing scenarios with augmented displays (Synthetic Vision Systems); NextGen Closely Spaced Parallel Approaches (CSPA); and, Single-Pilot Operations (SPO).
Go to: Human Performance Modeling: NextGen Operations and Situation Awareness Publications Available For Download |
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