Diagnostic support systems

A combination of factors such as an ageing workforce and growth in emerging international economies is resulting in substantial increases in the demand for operators in many high-reliability domains. For instance, in the aviation industry, it is estimated that 498,000 new commercial airline pilots will need to be trained over the next 20 years (Boeing Commercial Airplanes, 2013). An issue associated with a workforce comprising operators who have not accumulated sufficient experience to have developed expert cognitive processing skills, so called less experienced operators, is the increased potential for error due to limitations in human information processing. Emergency situations present a particular problem for less-experienced operators. The significant demands that are placed on cognitive processing resources to develop a situation diagnosis within time-critical situations provides the potential to overwhelm the processing capacity of inexperienced personnel. Consequently, to ensure that system integrity is maintained, there is a need for the development and application of systems that have the capacity to aid the diagnostic ability of less-experienced operators. Using an aviation accident as a context, this chapter provides an overview of the information processing limitations of less experienced operators and discusses a potential approach for supporting situational diagnosis during complex and time-constrained situations.