Approaches

CRIA is a Human Factors methodology for the investigation of  safety-critical systems like ATM (Air Traffic Management), aviation and railways. The main goal of CRIA is to analyse the interactions between the human component of a system and the other components: procedures, equipment, other humans, organisational aspects. Such analysis brings to the identification of strength and weakness points of the system as a whole, so that mitigation actions can be studied to reduce the probability of the occurrence and the severity of critical events within the system.

CRIA has its theoretical foundation in the distributed cognition theory that claims that human cognition is not exclusively characterised by the brain activity but it is distributed among the brain and the artefacts employed carrying out the activity. This idea dates back to the cultural-historical school asserting that all kinds of conscious human activities are structured by the use of external tools.

Following this approach, key features of CRIA are:

• The recognition of the importance of all mediating artefacts both material (such as flight deck technologies, checklist, manuals, etc) and immaterial (practices, operational procedures, competencies, Company guidelines, legislation, etc.) used by  the human being to carry out the activity.
• The recognition of the importance of the cultural and organisational milieu in which human activities develop.
• The use of structured narrative scenarios to represent the interactions between human actors and mediating artefacts, by preserving realism of the context.

CRIA has been used in real time simulations, shadow mode trials and live flight trials. It has proved to be a flexible and adaptable methodology to evaluate new concepts and tools, as well as minor changes to the current operational situation.

The main phases of CRIA are:

Preparation of test material - Before the preparation of the test plan, it is necessary to carry out an in-depth analysis of the work system where the new system is meant to be introduced. Such an analysis focuses on the weak points in the current system thereby eliciting safety issues and problems in the actual distribution of resources within the system components (equipment, procedural, human and contextual) as well as their interaction. This is done through the identification of the basic system components, the definition of validation scenarios, the preparation of the material necessary for supporting the human factors team during the test.

Run the test - According to the type of study to be run, different data collection techniques can be applied to gather the qualitative and quantitative data that are necessary for the following CRIA analysis (questionnaires, observation grid, video-recordings, etc.).

Data analysis - Once the study has been run, the human factors team deals with the analysis of the breakdowns, critical events, users' needs and any information emerged during the study. A powerful support for this phase is the video-analysis technique, through which meaningful events are replayed and commented directly with users or operational experts. Data analysis is conducted integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches, so that one can benefit from the outcomes of the other: if quantitative analysis evidences trends and patterns, the qualitative one supports in providing an explanation for them.

CRIA is compliant with validation methodologies widely used at European level in the ATM domain like MAEVA (Master Atm European VAlidation plan) and E-OCVM (European Operational Concept Validation Methodology). CRIA complements such methodologies by providing detailed guidelines on how to manage the evaluation process.

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