Research

The chair’s research activities focus on the issue of organizing human work in complex technological systems more efficiently, more safely, and more humane. This issue is treated on different levels: individuals and their problems in coping with complex systems in situations of mental exhaustion or fatigue; teams who control and supervise a complex system and have to coordinate and communicate appropriately; and organisations with their rules and structures which influence staff’s safety critical behaviour. The main focus is on:

System safety

We study different psychological aspects in the design and control of technological systems. Examples are the effects of increased trust in the reliability of automation (complacency); adverse effects of automation on the operator’s ability to get a correct picture of the system’s condition (situation awareness) and to control the system manually in case of dysfunction (out-of-the-loop-unfamiliarity); communication and coordination in operational teams as well as the effects of stress (fatigue, time pressure) on the human controlling and supervising performance in man-machine systems.

Our research is based on extensive human factors comprehension and includes all safety relevant factors: humans, technology, organisation and organisational environment.  A holistic systemic theoretical frame and interdisciplinary orientation are the characteristics of all our projects. Organisational learning and safety culture are just two examples. We want to further develop methods to analyse accidents and near misses in order to have a basis for organisational learning, to develop instruments to diagnose safety culture in organisations, and to analyse supporting and blocking conditions for ameliorating safety culture.

Problems of individual and cooperative work in man-machine systems

We study different psychological aspects in the design and control of technological systems. Examples are the effects of increased trust in the reliability of automation (complacency); adverse effects of automation on the operator’s ability to get a correct picture of the system’s condition (situation awareness) and to control the system manually in case of dysfunction (out-of-the-loop-unfamiliarity); communication and coordination in operational teams as well as the effects of stress (fatigue, time pressure) on the human controlling and supervising performance in man-machine systems.

Space psychology

- coming soon -