Now you see it, now you don’t: dynamism amplifies the typicality effect

Some safety events do not stabilise in a coherent state, presenting with transient or intermittent features. Such dynamism may pose problems for human performance, especially if combined with non-typical stimuli that are rarely encountered in everyday work. This may explain undesirable pilot behaviour and could be an important cognitive factor in recent aircraft accidents. Sixty-five airline pilots tested a real-world typicality gradient, composed of two cockpit events, a typical event, and a non-typical event, across two different forms of dynamism, a stable, single system transition, and an unstable, intermittent system transition. We found that non-typical event stimuli elicited a greater number of response errors and incurred an increased response latency when compared to typical event stimuli, replicating the typicality effect. These performance deteriorations were amplified when a form of unstable system dynamism was introduced. Typical stimuli were unaffected by dynamism. This indicates that dynamic, non-typical events are problematic for pilots and may lead to poor event recognition and response. Typical is advantageous, even if dynamic. Manufacturers and airlines should evolve pilot training and crew procedures to take account of variety in event dynamics.

Reconstructing the dynamics of the highly similar May 2016 and June 2019 Iliamna Volcano (Alaska) ice–rock avalanches from seismoacoustic data

Surficial mass wasting events are a hazard worldwide. Seismic and acoustic signals from these often remote processes, combined with other geophysical observations, can provide key information for monitoring and rapid response efforts and enhance our understanding of event dynamics. Here, we present seismoacoustic data and analyses for two very large ice–rock avalanches occurring on Iliamna Volcano, Alaska (USA), on 22 May 2016 and 21 June 2019. Iliamna is a glacier-mantled stratovolcano located in the Cook Inlet, ∼200 km from Anchorage, Alaska. The volcano experiences massive, quasi-annual slope failures due to glacial instabilities and hydrothermal alteration of volcanic rocks near its summit. The May 2016 and June 2019 avalanches were particularly large and generated energetic seismic and infrasound signals which were recorded at numerous stations at ranges from ∼9 to over 600 km. Both avalanches initiated in the same location near the head of Iliamna's east-facing Red Glacier, and their ∼8 km long runout shapes are nearly identical. This repeatability – which is rare for large and rapid mass movements – provides an excellent opportunity for comparison and validation of seismoacoustic source characteristics. For both events, we invert long-period (15–80 s) seismic signals to obtain a force-time representation of the source. We model the avalanche as a sliding block which exerts a spatially static point force on the Earth. We use this force-time function to derive constraints on avalanche acceleration, velocity, and directionality, which are compatible with satellite imagery and observed terrain features. Our inversion results suggest that the avalanches reached speeds exceeding 70 m s−1, consistent with numerical modeling from previous Iliamna studies. We lack sufficient local infrasound data to test an acoustic source model for these processes. However, the acoustic data suggest that infrasound from these avalanches is produced after the mass movement regime transitions from cohesive block-type failure to granular and turbulent flow – little to no infrasound is generated by the initial failure. At Iliamna, synthesis of advanced numerical flow models and more detailed ground observations combined with increased geophysical station coverage could yield significant gains in our understanding of these events.

Seismic inversions of large, rapid landslides: what they can and cannot tell us about event dynamics

<p>Researchers are increasingly incorporating force histories derived from long-period seismic waves into multidisciplinary studies of large, rapid landslides. The force history can provide important information about what happened during failure — information that complements data available from field investigations and remote sensing analyses. It can also provide additional constraints on the dynamics of landslide motion than can be used to validate and/or calibrate numerical landslide models. However, the inversions need to be of high quality and must be interpreted properly. Because this technique is relatively new, we are still discovering how to best conduct inversions to obtain robust results and how to appropriately interpret these results. In this study, we run numerical models of landslides with idealized source and path geometries using two different modeling packages, DAN3D and D-Claw, and we use the model outputs to generate synthetic long-period seismic data. Both models use depth-averaged flow equations over 3D topography, with DAN3D using semi-empirical material rheologies and D-Claw using a two-phase granular and fluid flow approach. To examine the influence of station azimuthal coverage and distance, we synthesize seismic data for a wide range of possible station configurations. We then use these synthetic seismic data to conduct seismic inversions using the recently released open-source Python-based software package, lsforce (https://code.usgs.gov/ghsc/lhp/lsforce). In doing these inversions, we add differing levels and types of noise, vary the inversion options (e.g., frequency range, regularization techniques) and then compare the results to the “known” dynamics of the modeled idealized landslides. We aim to understand common artefacts, limitations, and other potential pitfalls in interpretation, to guide the inversion process in future studies. We repeat this process for idealized landslides of increasing complexity, including multi-part failures, sinuous paths, and gradual versus sudden initiations, to simulate how these characteristics are reflected in the force history and to better understand what level of detail can be constrained from the seismic inversion. This work will help guide researchers to obtain more reliable information about landslide dynamics from seismic inversions in future landslide studies.</p>