Novel information technologies such as wearable augmented reality displays (WARDs) can provide operators of safety-critical systems with crucial real-time information anywhere in the work space. The evolving capabilities and proliferation of these technologies occasion important questions about their impact on operators in safety-critical systems such as nuclear power plants, aircraft cockpits, and ships. This article describes a WARD evaluation in the safety-critical setting of marine transportation in a real-time physical simulator. A large pool (n = 211) of operators in conventional and WARD technology conditions showed mixed results: WARD use dampened operator performance variability, improved situation awareness (SA), self-efficacy, and trust, but also increased operator workload. These results suggest that WARDs show promise as a mobile information display technology in one safety-critical system where operator mobility is important, and also suggest that increased workload may be a cost accompanying the desirable outcomes of reduced performance variability and increased SA.

This paper considers how changes in team composition (such as the number and rate of turnover of team members) are linked to team performance, as assessed in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and equality (i.e., distribution of effort). Study data are taken from a large-scale, postdisaster debris removal operation in the USA, collected through existing transaction-level data logging systems. The data enable a detailed (and objective) examination of team performance, thus overcoming many shortcomings of retrospective methods such as questionnaires. The results show that the increased turnover diminishes performance along all dimensions, while an increased team size contributes to effectiveness but reduces equality. Implications of this study for theory and future empirical work are both discussed.

Highly reliable organizations (HROs) are those organizations, which by nature or design, cannot or must not fail; the consequences of failure in such systems are usually catastrophic. Systems that combine the characteristics of highly reliable operations and distributed, virtual organizations are known as highly reliable virtual organizations (HRVOs)—distributed and electronically linked groups of organizations that excel in high-consequence settings. Tsunami warning systems (TWS) are one example of virtual organizations that operate under enormous expectations for reliability. Adaptive structuration theory suggests that, in complex systems, technology and organizational structures co-evolve, and users adapt technology to their needs, creating shared meaning about the role and utility of technology in various settings. In this article, we consider how the shared meaning that develops in the social shaping of technology in one HRVO, tsunami warning systems, contributes to reliability enhancement. Following Poole and DeSanctis [2000], this study is a structuration study in a particular context, exploring how structuration occurs, the conditions that influence it, and its consequences or outcomes. We begin by describing HRVOs and the co-adaptive roles that technology and organizational structures play in such organizations. We then describe a global tsunami warning system as an illustrative case of a globally distributed sociotechnical system for which use of technology and distributed organizational structures should enhance reliability. We describe how social media plays a role in adaptive structuration in tsunami warning systems, and then return to consider the nature of HRVOs and their characteristics, en route to identifying challenges in the co-adaptation of technology and organizational structures in highly reliable tsunami warning systems.

As large-scale organizations and systems become more complex and difficult to understand, and with the notable failure of organizational practices to prevent disaster in safety-critical systems, interest in identifying leading indicators (LI) of adverse events in safety-critical settings has increased. This paper examines the question of how to provide early warning of adverse events to groups in complex safety-critical settings by understanding the connection between safety culture and performance. Significant safety factors that were correlated with safety performance were identified as LIs of safety, using safety culture survey data from three industry partners gathered over a two-year period. Complementary techniques suggest further use of multiple analysis techniques in order to understand the structure, variance, and power of the identified LIs, as well as to provide validation methods for the results.

Risk is inherent in distributed, large-scale systems. The paper explores the challenges of risk modeling in such systems, and suggests a risk modeling approach that is responsive to the requirements of complex, distributed, large-scale systems. An example of the use of the approach in the marine transportation system is given. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the approach and of future work.

This paper describes an empirical investigation of the effect of three dimensional (3-D) imaging on group performance in a tactical planning task. The objective of the study is to examine the role that stereoscopic imaging can play in supporting face-to-face group problem solving and decision making-in particular, the alternative generation and evaluation processes in teams. It was hypothesized that with the stereoscopic display, group members would better visualize the information concerning the task environment, producing open communication and information exchanges. The experimental setting was a tactical command and control task, and the quality of the decisions and nature of the group decision process were investigated with three treatments: 1) noncomputerized, i.e., topographic maps with depth cues; 2) two-dimensional (2-D) imaging; and 3) stereoscopic imaging. The results were mixed on group performance. However, those groups with the stereoscopic displays generated more alternatives and spent less time on evaluation. In addition, the stereoscopic decision aid did not interfere with the group problem solving and decision-making processes. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential benefits, and the need to resolve demonstrated weaknesses of the technology.

We are rarely interested in organizations that can do catastrophic harm until something happens in them to attract public attention. Yet when that event occurs we usually find the cause is not simply human error. More often, human error is embedded in organizational and societal processes that ultimately result in the error. The thesis of this essay is that we cannot fully understand the complex social processes that underlie either the reliable or unreliable operations of complex social and technical systems without examining such systems in their totality. The purpose of this paper is to identify some determinants of behavior most important in understanding the operation of large scale systems in highly turbulent environments, and to suggest research that needs to be done to reduce error in these systems. We consider both active and latent failures. We propose that by effectively managing these determinants, potentially unsafe organizations can view and navigate the "safety space" more effectively, moving along the safety continuum toward more safe, rather than less safe, systems.