scholarly journals How Cognitive Biases Influence the Data Verification of Safety Indicators: A Case Study in Rail

Safety ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Burggraaf ◽  
Groeneweg ◽  
Sillem ◽  
van Gelder

The field of safety and incident prevention is becoming more and more data based. Data can help support decision making for a more productive and safer work environment, but only if the data can be, is and should be trusted. Especially with the advance of more data collection of varying quality, checking and judging the data is an increasingly complex task. Within such tasks, cognitive biases are likely to occur, causing analysists to overestimate the quality of the data and safety experts to base their decisions on data of insufficient quality. Cognitive biases describe generic error tendencies of persons, that arise because people tend to automatically rely on their fast information processing and decision making, rather than their slow, more effortful system. This article describes five biases that were identified in the verification of a safety indicator related to train driving. Suggestions are also given on how to formalize the verification process. If decision makers want correct conclusions, safety experts need good quality data. To make sure insufficient quality data is not used for decision making, a solid verification process needs to be put in place that matches the strengths and limits of human cognition.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Wasef Abuezhayeh ◽  
Les Ruddock ◽  
Issa Shehabat

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate and explain how organizations in the construction sector can enhance their decision-making process (DMP) by practising knowledge management (KM) and business process management (BPM) activities. A conceptual framework is developed that recognises the elements that impact DMP in terms of KM and BPM. The development of this framework goes beyond current empirical work on KM in addition to BPM as it investigates a wider variety of variables that impact DMP. Design/methodology/approach A case study is undertaken in the context of the construction industry in Jordan. A theoretical framework is developed and assessment of the proposed framework was undertaken through a questionnaire survey of decision-makers in the construction sector and expert interviews. Findings The outcomes of this research provide several contributions to aid decision-makers in construction organizations. Growth in the usage of KM and BPM, in addition to the integration between them, can provide employees with task-related knowledge in the organization’s operative business processes, improve process performance, promote core competence and maximise and optimise business performance. Originality/value Through the production of a framework, this study provides a tool to enable improved decision-making. The framework generates a strong operational as well as theoretical approach to the organizational utilization of knowledge and business processes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gibran Cruz-Martinez ◽  
Gokce Cerev

Global AgeWatch Index and Insights by HelpAge International aim to contribute to achievement of long-term transformative change in respect to ageing and the lives of older people by advocating for better production of timely and good quality data to inform policy and program response.The Global AgeWatch Index is a composite index that measures quality of life of older people, and ranks countries based on four domains – income security, health status, enabling environment and capability. The index was developed in partnership with Professor Asghar Zaidi. The index was published during 2013-2015.The Global AgeWatch Insights is a research-based advocacy tool that examines situation of older people in low- and middle-income countries, assesses availability of relevant data and evidence to support the analysis, and identification of policy actions. The Insights are produced in partnership with AARP. The reports were launched in 2018 are planned to be released every three years with a different thematic focus. The first report focuses on the inequities of the health systems in twelve low- and middle-income countries.


2012 ◽  
Vol 538-541 ◽  
pp. 895-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Chen Huang

A number of factors must be considered when selecting a convention site. Typically, most selections are based on the decision makers’ knowledge and experience, which may lead to biased decisions based on the decision makers’ subjective judgment. This study establishes decision-making evaluation factors and attributes for convention site selection based on a literature review. After surveying experts’ opinions using questionnaires, we employed the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to analyze the weighting of the factors and attributes. The results show that of the five evaluation factors, site environment is the most important, followed by meeting and accommodation facilities, local support, extraconference opportunities, and costs. Additionally, the five most important attributes among the 20 evaluation attributes are the suitability of convention facilities, suitability and quality of local infrastructure, climate, city image, and political conflict or terrorist threats.


Author(s):  
Lei Wang ◽  
Qing Liu ◽  
Tongle Yin

Navigation safety improving investment aims at mitigating risk and improving safety of shipping system, while decision-makers’ attitudes toward the uncertainty of shipping safety possess a characteristic of “bounded rationality.” To study the tendency of shipping safety investment decision-making with different risk perception and appetite, a decision-making method based on cumulative prospect theory is proposed in this article. First, we extract the decision attributes through analyzing the factors affecting shipping safety investment. Then, according to cumulative prospect theory, the value function and the probability weighting function for calculating cumulative prospect values of shipping investment attributes are given. Under the risk-based multi-attribute group decision-making framework, linear programming model and projection method are introduced to aggregate the weights of attributes and decision-makers, respectively. Furthermore, through a case study, the proposed methodology is utilized in Three Gorges Dam area, and the desirable safety investment scheme is determined from a set of candidate alternatives. The case study shows not only validity and feasibility of the decision-making approach but also the mechanism of shipping safety investment decision-making with consideration of the behavior characteristics of decision-makers such as reference dependence, risk appetite distortion, and loss aversion.


Kybernetes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Virupaxi Bagodi ◽  
Biswajit Mahanty

PurposeManagerial decision-making is an area of interest to both academia and practitioners. Researchers found that managers often fail to manage complex decision-making tasks and system thinkers assert that generic structures known as systems archetypes help them to a great deal in handling such situations. In this paper, it is demonstrated that decision makers resort to lowering of goal (quick-fix) in order to resolve the gap between the goal and current reality in the “drifting the goals” systems archetype.Design/methodology/approachA real-life case study is taken up to highlight the pitfalls of “drifting the goals” systems archetype for a decision situation in the Indian two-wheeler industry. System dynamics modeling is made use of to obtain the results.FindingsThe decision makers fail to realize the pitfall of lowering the goal to resolve the gap between the goal and current reality. It is seen that, irrespective of current less-than-desirable performance, managers adopting corrective actions other than lowering of goals perform better in the long run. Further, it is demonstrated that extending the boundary and experimentation results in designing a better service system and setting benchmarks.Practical implicationsThe best possible way to avoid the pitfall is to hold the vision and not lower the long term goal. The managers must be aware of the pitfalls beforehand.Originality/valueSystems thinking is important in complex decision-making tasks. Managers need to embrace long-term perspective in decision-making. This paper demonstrates the value of systems thinking in terms of a case study on the “drifting the goals” systems archetype.


Author(s):  
Eric Beerbohm

This chapter defends a theory of citizenship that recognizes our need to make online decisions under electoral pressures, given our foibles as decision makers. Drawing upon the extensive literature on decision and judgment, it examines how fragile citizens are when it comes to decision making. The usual heuristics offered by political scientists suggest that citizens rely on informational shortcuts that are morally irresponsible. If we reconceive the role of the voter in explicitly moral terms, this approach is unsatisfactory in addressing the cognitive biases and defects of citizens. The chapter also considers the notion of cognitive partisanship and argues that it is unavoidable for decision makers to rely on heuristics when they reason about complex decisions. It concludes by emphasizing the task for a democratic ethics of belief: to provide citizens with heuristics that reduce the cognitive burden while respecting the moral obligations to attach to coercive, term-shaping decision making.


Author(s):  
Aniruddha Samanta ◽  
Kajla Basu

Reliability allocation is a very important problem during early design and development phases of a system. There are several reliability allocation techniques which are used to achieve the target reliability. The feasibility of objectives (FOO) technique is one of them that is widely used to perform system reliability allocation. But this technique has two fundamental shortcomings. The first is the measurement scale and the second is that it does not consider the order weight of the reliability allocation factors. The prioritization of the factors is also an important topic in decision making. Practically, all factors in multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) are not in the same priority level. Hence, in decision making situation, it is usual for decision makers to consider different priority factors. So, considering the prioritization of the factors, a reliability allocation method is proposed here to overcome the shortcomings of the FOO technique. Also, a case study on reliability allocation in airborne radar system is considered here to verify the efficiency of the proposed approach. Finally, the results are calculated in different optimistic and pessimistic view point and compared with the FOO technique. This comparison exhibits the advantages and supremacy of the proposed approach.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1531-1542
Author(s):  
Zita Zoltay Paprika

Many management scholars believe that the process used to make strategic decisions affects the quality of those decisions. However, several authors have observed a lack of research on the strategic decision-making process. Empirical tests of factors that have been hypothesized to affect the way strategic decisions are made are notably absent (Fredrickson, 1985). This article reports the results of a study that attempts to assess the effects of decision-making circumstances, focusing mainly on the approaches applied and the managerial skills and capabilities the decision makers built on during concrete strategic decisionmaking procedures. The study was conducted in California between September 2005 and June 2006 and it was sponsored by a Fulbright research scholarship grant.


Author(s):  
Tanushri Banerjee ◽  
Arindam Banerjee

There are several challenges faced by decision makers while deploying Business Analytics in their organization. There may not be one resolution approach that is suitable for creating a Business Analytics culture in all organizations. However, it is easy to perceive that most India-based organizations may have similar issues of data organization that may be impeding their progression in the field of Analytics. Based on their research, the authors have proposed a framework for adoption of Analytics in Indian firms in their book “Weaving Analytics for Effective Decision Making” by SAGE. They propose to use that model for explaining certain domain specific adoption of Business Analytics in organizations in India. They have used a case study of a Global Bank which is in the process of establishing its consumer lending USA operations, an offshore captive operation, in India to describe the process of building an Analytics team in an organization in India. Data processed using R has been added as screenshots for supporting the findings.


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