SAFETY Corner

My first guest this year is Hilda Tellioğlu, associate professor at the Institute for Visual Computing & Human-Centered Technology at the Vienna University of Technology. And Dean of Studies for Computer Science. She also holds management positions in various research initiatives, such as the Multidisciplinary Design & User Research Unit, the Centre for Informatics and Society and the Center for Technology and Science.

We spoke about her research focus: user centered design. At first is was discussed, why the topic is safety-relevant. A central question was of course, what human-centered design is. In addition to current options for making systems safer with user-centered design, innovative options were also discussed.

Ms. Tellioğlu recommended the following literature on the subject, among others:

• User-Centered Design: Why and How to Put Users First in Software Development by Dieter Wallach and Sebastian C. Scholz (2012)
• Socio-technical systems by Emery and Trist (1960)
• Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction by Helen Sharp, Jennifer Preece and Yvonne Rogers (5th edition from 2019)

Either listen here, on Spotify or on the platform of your choice!

Alfred Vlasek is a Safety Instructor at IFATCA (International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Association) and a member of IFATCA Safety and Just Culture Advisors. He is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna on the Safety and Systems Engineering course. This is his second time on the podcast.

This time Vlasek spoke about air traffic control: How air traffic controllers ensure safe flight operations and how the corona crisis affects air traffic control.

Either listen here, on Spotify or on the platform of your choice!

Sean Brady is a forensic engineer who works with business, government and the legal sector to understand and resolve complex issues that typically require a whole of system approach.

Sean has just completed the Brady Review, an investigation into the causes of fatalities in the mining industry in Queensland, Australia. This review analysed 20 years of incident and fatality information and culminated in 11 recommendations for both industry and the regulator.

In this episode Sean talks about the mining industry and why there is a need for change to prevent fatalities in the future. He discussed so-called High Reliability Organisations (HROs) and how they achieve high levels of safety. One key takeaway was: Feedback is vital to avoid drift into failure.

Sean is also a fellow podcaster. His recent podcasting project, Rethinking Safety, is based on the investigations he made for the Brady review.

The mentioned report and podcast can be found here:

The podcast “Rethinking Safety” and other Brady Heywood podcasts: Brady Heywood Podcasts

The Brady review: Review of all fatal accidents in Queensland mines and quarries from 2000 to 2019

Either listen here, on Spotify or on the platform of your choice!

Anthony Corso is a Ph.D. student in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at Stanford University where he is advised by Professor Mykel Kochenderfer in the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory (SISL). He studies approaches for the validation of safety-critical autonomous systems with an emphasis on interpretability and scalability.

This is the first english episode!

In this podcast he talked about safety-validation of autonomous systems. The latter includes systems such as robots, cars, aircraft, and planetary rovers equally. In May he published a paper which deals with different algorithms for black-box safety validation. One of the approaches is to use reinforcement learning, which was discussed in the podcast in more detail. He also briefly introduced the Next-Generation Airborne Collision Avoidance System ACAS X, in which development Professor Kochenderfer was heavily involved. ACAS X takes advantage of Dynamic Programming, an algorithm for optimal decision making.

The mentioned papers, further readings and an interesting podcast can be found here:

• The paper mentioned above: A Survey of Algorithms for Black-Box Safety Validation
• The paper on Adaptive Stress Testing (AST): Adaptive stress testing with reward augmentation for autonomous vehicle validation
• The AST toolbox mentioned in the podcast: AST-Toolbox
• The CARLA simulator mentioned in the podcast: CARLA
• An episode of Standford University's podcast The Future of Everything with Mykel Kochenderfer where he talkes about ACAS X and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in safety-critical systems: Mykel Kochenderfer: AI and safety-critical systems

Either listen here, on Spotify or on the platform of your choice!