Aerospace HFE

Introduction / Background

The Technical Committee on Aerospace Human Factors and Ergonomics (TCASHFE) is a scientific and technical committee of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA). The formation of the TCASHFE is endorsed by the IEA at its Annual Council Meeting. Its mission is to promote the development of Human-Centered Design in aerospace, and the application of derived knowledge, methods and tools for the betterment of research, educational and professional services. In particular, it focuses on aviation and space systems, including aircraft and spacecraft design, and the activities of system development, operations (whether on the ground or in air or space), maintenance, regulation and training.

TCASHFE goals are the following: help address various scientific and technical issues within aerospace, cooperate across disciplines to advance the state-of-the-art of knowledge and applications, and to set standards for society and industry use.A main goal is to rationalize what is currently done in the world in aeronautics and space with respect to human factors and ergonomics (HFE). Air and space are special domains where human beings have special relations with appropriate machines. Human-machine interaction in aerospace systems relates to safety, performance and comfort. HFE should then be analyzed with respect to these three dimensions.TCASHFE tries to establish a basis for taking into account human factors and creativity during aerospace life cycles. Human-centered designers are involved from the beginning of the life cycle of a system to its decommissioning. This poses two challenges for our community: (1) getting the broader engineering design communities to include us more substantially in all stages of design; and (2) in our own community figuring out what we would do with such an opportunity, since the dominance of our methods focus not only on evaluation but also on creativity, as synthesis and integration.

Organizational structure

The TCASHFE is organized into working groups (WG) related to timely, relevant, important and inescapable topics. These WG will be set up with respect to the motivation, leadership and availability of the WG leaders. The WG leader reports to the TC Chair.

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The TCASHFE will organize working groups (WGs), which are led by a TC member, who can then appoint other members. The WG leader reports to the TC Chair.

TCASHFE has three main roles:

1. Discuss issues related to the TC’s focus and activity plan. The discussion can be held online via mechanisms such as electronic mail, Skype, Google Hangout or similar interactive settings. Offline meetings can be scheduled at conferences where several TC members participate. Discussions should be held at regular intervals, at least quarterly.

2. Coordinate research, practice and standards issues pertaining to the TC domain through networking and collaboration with associated bodies such as ISO, ILO, WHO, ICOH and so forth.

3. Organize scientific events endorsed or co-sponsored by IEA. This can be in the form of a conference, workshop, symposium, panel and demonstration. The outcome of the event should be disseminated to IEA in the form of proceedings, technical reports, guidelines, and so forth. Examples are HCI-Aero conferences held in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA in 2010, Brussels, Belgium, EU in 2012 and Santa Clara, California, USA in 2014.

Actions planned for the short-term and long-term

TCASHFE is expected to support the IEA triennial congress by offering one or several scientific paper sessions or a panel discussion. The TCASHFE is responsible for soliciting and reviewing papers. Examples of such sessions were held in Beijing, China in 2009 and Recife, Brasil in 2012. TCASHFE should also host a meeting at the Congress by inviting members and non-members with similar interests, including students. To make a meeting venue available, TCASHFE should inform the STP (Science Technology & Practice) Chair at least three months prior to the Congress.

There will be at least one face-to-face meeting per year (we need to decide when according to the various conferences where we might be all participating and take the benefit of the travel. In 2015, we will have one TCASHFE meetings to facilitate the attendance of members and interested people during the IEA World Congress that will be held in Melbourne, Australia on August 9-14, 2015.

If you would like to attend this meeting, please send an email to gboy@fit.edu. We will keep you informed with the precise dates and locations in Melbourne, Australia. In the meantime, we will organize teleconferences regularly.

With recent efforts like the SESAR program in Europe or the NextGen program in the United States that attempt to redefine the way aviation will be managed and safety of the overall aviation system will be assured. In particular, as the boundaries of the systems change, their interdependency increases. These impacts on safety and related HCD need much better coordination between all aviation partners worldwide and much better input from the aerospace R&D community.Main objective is better coordinating and aligning on a worldwide level the various research efforts going on in the area of safety, efficiency and comfort assessments, in particular regarding the constantly-evolving technology-organization-people trilogy.Participants may include researchers and decision makers in Aviation and Space from academia, industry, and governmental agencies such as ICAO, EASA, EUROCONTROL, FAA, and NASA.Download PDF

 

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