scholarly journals A Method to Account for Personnel Risk Attitudes in System Design and Maintenance Activity Development

Systems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Benjamin W. Rathwell ◽  
Douglas L. Van Bossuyt ◽  
Anthony Pollman ◽  
Joseph Sweeney

Systems engineering practices in the maritime industry and the Navy consider operational availability as a system attribute determined by system components and a maintenance concept. A better understanding of the risk attitudes of system operators and maintainers may be useful in understanding potential impacts the system operators and maintainers have on operational availability. This article contributes to the literature a method that synthesizes the concepts of system reliability, and operator and maintainer risk attitudes to provide insight into the effect that risk attitudes of systems operators and maintainers have on system operational availability. The method consists of four steps providing the engineer with a risk-attitude-adjusted insight into the system’s potential operational availability. Systems engineers may use the method to iterate a system’s design or maintenance concept to improve expected operational availability. If it is deemed necessary to redesign a system, systems engineers will likely choose new system components and/or alter their configuration; however, redesign is not limited to physical alteration of the system. Several other options may be more practical depending the system’s stage in the life cycle to address low risk-adjusted operational availability such as changes to maintenance programs and system supportability rather than on component and system reliability. A simple representative example implementation is provided to demonstrate the method and discussion of the potential implications for Navy ship availability are discussed. Potential future work is also discussed.

Author(s):  
Oladokun Sulaiman Olanrewaju

Man lives in two worlds, the biosphere and the techno-sphere. Over the years, time needs, growth, speed, knowledge, and competition have created demand that necessitated man to build complex institutions. Ship design is not left out of this process. Inland waters are under threat from untreated waste that can feed bacteria and algae, which in turn exhaust the oxygen. The ocean, the seas, and fresh water together cover the largest percentage of planet earth. Many think that everything that runs into it is infinite; the ocean is providing the source of freshening winds and current that is far more vulnerable to polluting activities that have run off too many poisons into them. The ocean may cease to serve these purposes if care is not taking to prevent pollution. The issue of the environment has become so sensitive recently and is linked to infrastructure development work. In the maritime industry, polluting activities from oil bilge to ballast pumping has turned into poison and has an adverse effect on water resources. Some have choked too much estuarine water where fish spawn. In a nutshell, the two worlds of man are currently are out of balance and in potential conflict. Man is in the middle, and since the threats are mostly water related, ships are in the middle too. Historical records of a number of calamities that have resulted in heavy loss and pollution call for environmentally sound ships. This has led to a number of regulations that will subsequently affect policy change and procedure interaction with the system. The current situation has an effect on the design of new ships and modification of existing ships. This chapter discuss regulations design, with an emphasis on new system design drive towards processing waste and emissions on board so that discharges are acceptable. The chapter hopes to give insight into need, response, and research directions for green ship technology.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 4127
Author(s):  
Will Farlessyost ◽  
Kelsey-Ryan Grant ◽  
Sara R. Davis ◽  
David Feil-Seifer ◽  
Emily M. Hand

First impressions make up an integral part of our interactions with other humans by providing an instantaneous judgment of the trustworthiness, dominance and attractiveness of an individual prior to engaging in any other form of interaction. Unfortunately, this can lead to unintentional bias in situations that have serious consequences, whether it be in judicial proceedings, career advancement, or politics. The ability to automatically recognize social traits presents a number of highly useful applications: from minimizing bias in social interactions to providing insight into how our own facial attributes are interpreted by others. However, while first impressions are well-studied in the field of psychology, automated methods for predicting social traits are largely non-existent. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of two automated approaches—multi-label classification (MLC) and multi-output regression (MOR)—for first impression recognition from faces. We demonstrate that both approaches are able to predict social traits with better than chance accuracy, but there is still significant room for improvement. We evaluate ethical concerns and detail application areas for future work in this direction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asbjørn Følstad ◽  
Cameron Taylor

AbstractThe uptake of chatbots for customer service depends on the user experience. For such chatbots, user experience in particular concerns whether the user is provided relevant answers to their queries and the chatbot interaction brings them closer to resolving their problem. Dialogue data from interactions between users and chatbots represents a potentially valuable source of insight into user experience. However, there is a need for knowledge of how to make use of these data. Motivated by this, we present a framework for qualitative analysis of chatbot dialogues in the customer service domain. The framework has been developed across several studies involving two chatbots for customer service, in collaboration with the chatbot hosts. We present the framework and illustrate its application with insights from three case examples. Through the case findings, we show how the framework may provide insight into key drivers of user experience, including response relevance and dialogue helpfulness (Case 1), insight to drive chatbot improvement in practice (Case 2), and insight of theoretical and practical relevance for understanding chatbot user types and interaction patterns (Case 3). On the basis of the findings, we discuss the strengths and limitations of the framework, its theoretical and practical implications, and directions for future work.


CJEM ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 207-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher C.D. Evans ◽  
J.M. Tallon ◽  
Jennifer Bridge ◽  
Avery B. Nathens

ABSTRACT Objective: Despite evidence that patients suffering major traumatic injuries have improved outcomes when cared for within an organized system, the extent of trauma system development in Canada is limited. We sought to compile a detailed inventory of trauma systems in Canada as a first step toward identifying opportunities for improving access to trauma care. Methods: We distributed a nationwide online and mail survey to stakeholders intended to evaluate the extent of implementation of specific trauma system components. Targeted stakeholders included emergency physicians, trauma surgeons, trauma program medical directors and program managers, prehospital providers, and decision makers at the regional and provincial levels. A “snowball” approach was used to expand the sample base of the survey. Descriptive statistics were generated to quantify the nature and extent of trauma system development by region. Results: The overall response rate was 38.7%, and all levels of stakeholders and all provinces/territories were represented. All provinces were found to have designated trauma centres; however, only 60% were found to have been accredited within the past 10 years. Components present in 50% or fewer provinces included an inclusive trauma system model, interfacility transfer agreements, and a mechanism to track bed availability within the system. Conclusion: There is significant variability in the extent of trauma system development in Canada. Although all provinces have designated trauma centres, opportunities exist in many systems to implement additional components to improve the inclusiveness of care. In future work, we intend to quantify the strength of the relationship between different trauma system components and access to definitive trauma care.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
George A. Hazelrigg ◽  
Donald G. Saari

Abstract The derivation of a theory of systems engineering has long been complicated by the fact that there is little consensus within the systems engineering community regarding precisely what systems engineering is, what systems engineers do, and what might constitute reasonable systems engineering practices. To date, attempts at theories fail to accommodate even a sizable fraction of the current systems engineering community, and they fail to present a test of validity of systems theories, analytical methods, procedures or practices. This paper presents a more theoretical and more abstract approach to the derivation of a theory of systems engineering that has the potential to accommodate a broad segment of the systems engineering community and present a validity test. It is based on a simple preference statement: “I want the best system I can get.” From this statement, it is argued that a very rich theory can be obtained. Whereas most engineering disciplines are framed around a core set of widely accepted physical laws, to the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to frame an engineering discipline around a preference.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zia Wahdat ◽  
Michael Gunderson

PurposeThe study investigates whether there is an association between climate types and farm risk attitudes of principal operators.Design/methodology/approachThe study exploits temperature variation in the diverse climate types across the US and defines hot- and cold-climate states. Ordered logit and generalized ordered logit models are used to model principal operators' farm risk attitudes, which are measured on a Likert scale. The study uses two datasets. The first dataset is a 2017 survey of US large commercial producers (LCPs). The second dataset provides a Köppen-Geiger climate classification of the US at a spatial resolution of 5 arcmin for a 25-year period (1986–2010).FindingsThe study finds that principal operators in hot-climate states are 4–5% more likely to have a higher willingness to take farm risk compared to principal operators in cold-climate states.Research limitations/implicationsIt is likely that farm risk mitigation decisions differ between hot- and cold-climate states. For instance, the authors show that corn acres' enrollment in federal crop insurance and computers' usage for farm business are pursued more intensely in cold-climate states than in hot-climate states. A differentiation of farm risk attitude by hot- and cold-climate states may help agribusiness, the government and economists in their farm product offerings, farm risk management programs and agricultural finance models, respectively.Originality/valueBased on Köppen-Geiger climate classification, the study introduces hot- and cold-climate concepts to understand the relationship between climate types and principal operators' farm risk attitudes.


Author(s):  
T. O. Gogoberidze ◽  
V. I. Klassen ◽  
V. V. Kondratev ◽  
P. V. Novikov ◽  
P. A. Tushnov

The paper considers ways of increasing labour productivity in manufacturing radioelectronic system components. We used systems engineering methods to develop a new approach to describing manufacturing processes that makes it possible to reduce assembly duration. We present a promising technology for describing a manufacturing process in small-lot production using digital 3D modelling and a Lego -like approach to design building instructions for children's construction sets.


Author(s):  
Elena Zaitseva ◽  
Peter Sedlacek ◽  
Andrej Forgac

System reliability/availability is a complex concept that is evaluated based on numerous indices and measures. There are different methods for the calculation of these indices and measures in reliability analysis. Some of the most used indices are important measures. These measures allow us to evaluate the influence of fixed system components or set of components to the system reliability/availability. Importance measures are used today to allow for various aspects of the impact of system elements on its failure or operability. Analysis of element importance is used in the system design, diagnosis, and optimization. In this paper new algorithms for the calculation, some of the important measures are developed based on the matrix procedures. This paper's goal is the development of a new algorithm to calculate importance measures of the system based on the matrix procedures that can be transformed in the parallel procedures/algorithms. These algorithms are developed based on the application of Logical Differential Calculus of Boolean logic for the important analysis of the system. The application of parallel algorithms in importance analysis allows the evaluation of the system of large dimensions. Importance specific of the proposed matrix procedures for calculation of importance measures is the application of structure-function for the mathematical representation of the investigated system. This function defined the correlation of the system components states and system reliability/ availability. The structure-function, in this case, is defined as a truth vector to be used in the matrix transformation. The truth vector of a Boolean function is a column of the truth table of function if the values of the variables are lexicographically ordered. Therefore, the structure-function of any system can be represented by the truth vector of 2n elements un-ambiguously.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Khaled Ghonim ◽  
Deepti Muley ◽  
Mohamed Kharbeche ◽  
Yousef Mohamed ◽  
Ahmed Madkoor

Crashes involving pedestrians are a major concern for authorities in many developed and developing countries. To refrain pedestrians from illegal or unsafe road behavior, authorities introduced three pedestrian penalties in the State of Qatar from August 2019. This paper assesses the awareness, perception, and adaptive intentions of the new amendment to the pedestrians’ law. A questionnaire survey, designed in three languages, was distributed online using Qatar University contacts and Twitter account of the General Directorate of Traffic at the Ministry of Interior, State of Qatar. A sample of 521 complete responses was obtained and used for statistical analysis. The results indicated that only 32 % of the respondents were aware of the law amendment before taking this survey. Further, the higher score for perception, adaptive intentions and awareness showed that the respondents were aware of the risks and the law amendment will have a positive effect on their behavior on road as pedestrians. The outcomes of the analysis show the efficacy of the law amendment. However, the actual behavior changes need to be studied by analyzing the pedestrian crash data and conducting a before and after study. Moreover, the study of the effects on pedestrians’ behavior, through empirical observations, is proposed to get insight into actual behaviors after law amendment as a part of future work on the topic.


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