Risk Management in Life Critical Systems

Risk management deals with prevention, decision-making, action taking, crisis management and recovery, taking into account the consequences of unexpected events. The authors of this book are interested in ecological processes, human behavior, as well as the control and management of life-critical systems, which are potentially highly automated. Three main attributes define life-critical systems, i.e. safety, efficiency and comfort. They typically lead to complex and time-critical issues and can belong to domains such as transportation (trains, cars, aircraft), energy (nuclear, chemical engineering), health, telecommunications, manufacturing and services.

The topics covered relate to risk management principles, methods and tools, and reliability assessment: human errors as well as system failures, socio-organizational issues of crisis occurrence and management, co-operative work including human−machine cooperation and CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work): task and function allocation, authority sharing, interactivity, situation awareness, networking and management evolution and lessons learned from Human-Centered Design.

Table of Contents

PART 1: General Approaches for Crisis Management
Chapter 1: Dealing with the Unexpected
Chapter 2: Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment of Infrastructures and Networks: Concepts and Methodologies
Chapter 3: The Golden Hour Challenge: Applying Systems Engineering to Life-Critical System of Systems
Chapter 4: Situated Risk Visualization in Crisis Management
Chapter 5: Safety Critical Elements of the Railway System: Most Advanced Technologies and Process to Demonstrate and Maintain Highest Safety Performance
Chapter 6: Functional Modeling of Complex Systems

PART 2: Risk Management and Human Factors
Chapter 7: Designing Driver Assistance Systems in a Risk-based Process
Chapter 8: Dissonance Engineering for Risk Analysis: A Theoretical Framework
Chapter 9: The Fading Line between Self and System
Chapter 10: Risk Management: A Model for Procedure Use Analysis
Chapter 11: Driver-assistance Systems for Road Safety Improvement

PART 3: Managing Risk via Human–Machine Cooperation
Chapter 12: Human–Machine Cooperation Principles to Support Life-Critical Systems Management
Chapter 13: Cooperative Organization for Enhancing Situation Awareness
Chapter 14: A Cooperative Assistant for Deep Space Exploration
Chapter 15: Managing the Risks of Automobile Accidents via Human–Machine Collaboration
Chapter 16: Human–Machine Interaction in Automated Vehicles: The ABV Project
Chapter 17: Interactive Surfaces, Tangible Interaction: Perspectives for Risk Management