Although cognitive engineering has gained widespread acceptance as one of the most promising approaches to addressing and preventing difficulties with human-machine coordination and collaboration, it still meets with considerable skepticism and resistance in some of the industries that could benefit from its insights and recommendations. The challenge for cognitive engineers is to better understand the reasons underlying these reservations and to overcome them by demonstrating and communicating more effectively their concepts, approaches, and proposed solutions. To contribute to this goal, the current volume presents concrete examples of cognitive engineering research and design. It is an attempt to complement the already existing excellent literature on cognitive engineering in domains other than aviation and to introduce professionals and students in a variety of domains to this rather young discipline.
The editors of this book, and the authors whose work is included, subscribe to the need to evaluate work in context. Accepting new paradigms for the study of humans working in complex environments, they view the human as an asset--indeed a necessity--in human-machine systems and they accept and take advantage of variations in human behavior. In addition, they recognize that much or most error is the result of mismatches between human capabilities and the demands placed on those humans by the machines which they use in the environments in which they are placed. As a whole, this volume illustrates how far we've come in understanding the cognitive bases of human work in complex human-machine systems.

Managing safety in a professional environment requires constant negotiation with other competitive dimensions of risk management (finances, market and political drivers, manpower and social crisis). This is obvious, although generally not said in safety manuals. The book provides a unique vision of how to best find these compromises, starting with lessons learnt from natural risk management by individuals, then applying them to the craftsman industry, complex industrial systems (civil aviation, nuclear energy) and public services (like transportation and medicine). It offers a unique, illustrated, easy to read and scientifically based set of original concepts and pragmatic methods to revisit safety management and adopt a successful system vision. As such, and with illustrations coming from many various fields (aviation, fishing, nuclear, oil, medicine), it potentially covers a broad readership.

Drawing on decades of industrial experience, this insightful and practical guide uses case studies and an interdisciplinary perspective to explain the fundamentals of simulation training to improve performance of high-risk professional activities. It seeks to identify those conditions under which simulation training has been shown to improve professional practice while employing extensive real examples. Simulation Training: Fundamentals and Application helps readers to develop their own synthesis of the simulation learning method and to use such training to enhance their skills and performance. Case studies demonstrate five specific theatres of professional practice - the nuclear-power industry, aeronautics, surgery, anesthesia and metallurgy - and then detailed analysis highlights the common factors and key results. The author's background as a Human Factors Consultant, Physicist and Physiologist has enriched studies of humans in work situations, work organization and management and he has also been involved in pedagogical conception of experimental training on simulators based on his experience as a safety expert on nuclear power plant. The book is useful to practitioners, researchers and students, both in industry and in university. It is clearly cross disciplinary as it presents and discusses applications in engineering, professional practice (airline pilots) and medicine.

Drawing on decades of industrial experience, this insightful and practical guide uses case studies and an interdisciplinary perspective to explain the fundamentals of simulation training to improve performance of high-risk professional activities. It seeks to identify those conditions under which simulation training has been shown to improve professional practice while employing extensive real examples. Simulation Training: Fundamentals and Application helps readers to develop their own synthesis of the simulation learning method and to use such training to enhance their skills and performance. Case studies demonstrate five specific theatres of professional practice - the nuclear-power industry, aeronautics, surgery, anesthesia and metallurgy - and then detailed analysis highlights the common factors and key results. The author's background as a Human Factors Consultant, Physicist and Physiologist has enriched studies of humans in work situations, work organization and management and he has also been involved in pedagogical conception of experimental training on simulators based on his experience as a safety expert on nuclear power plant. The book is useful to practitioners, researchers and students, both in industry and in university. It is clearly cross disciplinary as it presents and discusses applications in engineering, professional practice (airline pilots) and medicine.