Book review
The final frontier H
uman Factors: how to achieve the optimum match between people and railway engineering. Rail
professionals are uncommonly well versed in this otherwise obscure branch of scientific endeavor, but only because it is so important to the industry. The final frontier? Perhaps, because after we have solved all the technical and procedural issues what we have left over are those troublesome and difficult to cope with ‘human issues’. You know the ones. Humans on the railway not behaving as we were expecting them to; expensive engineering interventions that fall flat on their face the moment they come into contact with people; problems existing methods of design and procurement have somehow failed to capture despite the effort and expense involved. All of which is a shame now that some of the highest ranking risks on the railway have a prominent Human Factors dimension.
So, you have read the guidance documents from the regulatory authorities, had training managers describe the wonderful world of Human Factors to you, seen the worth of it all in your daily operations. But what if you want to go further? What if you are in a role observing issues of strategic importance that you are convinced have a Human Factors dimension? Moreover, what if you want to do something about it? Or at the very least, sound like an intelligent customer in front of the numerous Human Factors professionals at loose within the industry? Evaluation of Rail Technology: A Practical Human Factors Guide could help. Edited by acknowledged rail experts and containing chapters authored by Human Factors scientists and researchers, the industry reader should not be deterred. The chapters are all well-judged, can be read in any order depending on interest, and are liberally sprinkled with real-world railway examples and case studies; this material really does apply in a practical setting. The first three chapters are
the ‘call to action’ wherein we discover the perils and pitfalls
of new technology and the key Human Factors issues in play. We are often quick to assume that it is the driver’s fault (or whomever else was the last hapless individual to be standing near the technology) but this argument only takes us so far, and in these early chapters we focus not on ‘who’ but ‘why’. Given the former it is perhaps no wonder there is so much resistance to new technology, a theme picked up in chapter three and one that many will find instantly recognisable. Here we have the intended benefactors of new technology asking multiple questions and pointing out flaws, not using the new technology correctly, pretending to comply, or as one case study describes, spraying over the new in-cab interface with paint. So that’s the problem, what about the solutions? Solution number one – a theme that runs throughout the book – is to do Human Factors early, involve
Dr Guy Walker reviews Evaluation of Rail Technology: A Practical Human Factors Guide
“This is not a beginner’s guide to Human Factors but then the rail industry is no longer a beginner”
users in a form of participatory design at a stage when it is cheap to make design changes. Within the rail industry lurks a particularly powerful Human Factors tool, the simulator, that can help us do this. The book dedicates two whole chapters to explaining how this expensive resource can be used in new and imaginative ways, complemented by other chapters that explain Human Factors methods like task analysis that help us to think about railway technology issues through a Human Factors lens. This is not a beginner’s guide to Human Factors but then the rail industry is no longer a beginner. It is a technical book, rich in detail and insight, but also one that has itself been designed for Human Use. It is easy to read, being in equal part a railway book as much as it is a Human Factors one. When all else has failed, perhaps the insights contained in this book might be just the key insight needed. Human Factors: from the intervention of last resort to the intervention of first resort?
•
Edited by Chris Bearman, Anjum Naweed, Jill Dorrian, Janette Rose, and Drew Dawson. Published by Ashgate, £65.00 (£58.50 website
www.ashgate.com) ISBN: 978-1- 4094-4243-1
Dr Guy Walker is a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University’s Institute for Infrastructure and Environment Email:
G.H.Walker@hw.ac.uk
December 2013 Page 53
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140