The paper presents a framework that through structured analysis of accident reports explores the differences between practice and academic literature as well amongst organizations regarding their views on human error. The framework is based on the hypothesis that the wording of accident reports reflects the safety thinking and models that have been applied during the investigation, and includes 10 aspects identified in the state-of-the-art literature. The framework was applied to 52 air accident reports published by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and 45 ones issued by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) from 1999 to 2014. Frequency analysis and statistical tests showed that the presence of the aspects in the accident reports varied from 32.6% to 81.7%, and revealed differences between the ATSB and the DSB approaches to human error. However, in overall safety thinking have not changed over time, thus, suggesting that academic propositions might have not yet affected practice dramatically.
Market competition and global financial uncertainty have been the principal drivers that impel aviation companies to proceed to budget cuts, including decreases in salary and work force levels, in order to ensure viability and sustainability. Under the concepts of Maslow and Herzberg’s motivation theories, the current paper unfolds the influence of employment cost fluctuations on an aviation organization’s accidents attributed to human error. This study exploited financial and accident data over a period of 13 years, and explored if rates of accidents attributed to human errors of flight, maintenance and ramp crews, correlate with the average employment expenditures (N=13). In addition, the study took into account the relationship between average task load (ratio of flying hours per employee) and accident rates related to human error since task load, as part of total workload, is a constraint of modern complex systems. The results revealed strong correlations amongst accident rates linked to human error with the average employment costs and task load. The use of more specific data per aviation organizational department and professional group may further validate the results of this study. Organizations that seek to explore the 2 association between human error and employment budget and task load might appropriately adapt the approach proposed.
This paper aims to describe how we change our mind. As any human knows from his or her own experience, this does not always come naturally to us. This dissertation therefore aims to find fault in Seneca’s assertion: not only to err is human, but it is also human to persist in this mistake despite evidence to the contrary.In this paper I will argue that changing one’s mind is regulated through emotions, building on Damasio’s thoughts that emotions are not a luxury, but essential to rational thinking and normal behavior. His landmark book “Descarte’s Error“ (Damasio and Sutherland 1996) inspired the title of the current work. This research has been triggered by my experience in industry, where I have been lucky enough to have collaborated with many talented, friendly and rather stubborn people for over 20 years.Referentiede Boer, R.J. (2011), Seneca's Error: The Intervening Effect of Emotions on Mental Model Preservation , Symposium on Human Factors for Future Aviation, Schiphol Oost, The Netherlands
Developing a framework that integrates Advanced Language Models into the qualitative research process.Qualitative research, vital for understanding complex phenomena, is often limited by labour-intensive data collection, transcription, and analysis processes. This hinders scalability, accessibility, and efficiency in both academic and industry contexts. As a result, insights are often delayed or incomplete, impacting decision-making, policy development, and innovation. The lack of tools to enhance accuracy and reduce human error exacerbates these challenges, particularly for projects requiring large datasets or quick iterations. Addressing these inefficiencies through AI-driven solutions like AIDA can empower researchers, enhance outcomes, and make qualitative research more inclusive, impactful, and efficient.The AIDA project enhances qualitative research by integrating AI technologies to streamline transcription, coding, and analysis processes. This innovation enables researchers to analyse larger datasets with greater efficiency and accuracy, providing faster and more comprehensive insights. By reducing manual effort and human error, AIDA empowers organisations to make informed decisions and implement evidence-based policies more effectively. Its scalability supports diverse societal and industry applications, from healthcare to market research, fostering innovation and addressing complex challenges. Ultimately, AIDA contributes to improving research quality, accessibility, and societal relevance, driving advancements across multiple sectors.
Today, embedded devices such as banking/transportation cards, car keys, and mobile phones use cryptographic techniques to protect personal information and communication. Such devices are increasingly becoming the targets of attacks trying to capture the underlying secret information, e.g., cryptographic keys. Attacks not targeting the cryptographic algorithm but its implementation are especially devastating and the best-known examples are so-called side-channel and fault injection attacks. Such attacks, often jointly coined as physical (implementation) attacks, are difficult to preclude and if the key (or other data) is recovered the device is useless. To mitigate such attacks, security evaluators use the same techniques as attackers and look for possible weaknesses in order to “fix” them before deployment. Unfortunately, the attackers’ resourcefulness on the one hand and usually a short amount of time the security evaluators have (and human errors factor) on the other hand, makes this not a fair race. Consequently, researchers are looking into possible ways of making security evaluations more reliable and faster. To that end, machine learning techniques showed to be a viable candidate although the challenge is far from solved. Our project aims at the development of automatic frameworks able to assess various potential side-channel and fault injection threats coming from diverse sources. Such systems will enable security evaluators, and above all companies producing chips for security applications, an option to find the potential weaknesses early and to assess the trade-off between making the product more secure versus making the product more implementation-friendly. To this end, we plan to use machine learning techniques coupled with novel techniques not explored before for side-channel and fault analysis. In addition, we will design new techniques specially tailored to improve the performance of this evaluation process. Our research fills the gap between what is known in academia on physical attacks and what is needed in the industry to prevent such attacks. In the end, once our frameworks become operational, they could be also a useful tool for mitigating other types of threats like ransomware or rootkits.
This project addresses the fundamental societal problem that encryption as a technique is available since decades, but has never been widely adopted, mostly because it is too difficult or cumbersome to use for the public at large. PGP illustrates this point well: it is difficult to set-up and use, mainly because of challenges in cryptographic key management. At the same time, the need for encryption has only been growing over the years, and has become an urgent problem with stringent requirements – for instance for electronic communication between doctors and patients – in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and with systematic mass surveillance activities of internationally operating intelligence agencies. The interdisciplinary project "Encryption for all" addresses this fundamental problem via a combination of cryptographic design and user experience design. On the cryptographic side it develops identity-based and attribute-based encryption on top of the attribute-based infrastructure provided by the existing IRMA-identity platform. Identity-based encryption (IBE) is a scientifically well-established technique, which addresses the key management problem in an elegant manner, but IBE has found limited application so far. In this project it will be developed to a practically usable level, exploiting the existing IRMA platform for identification and retrieval of private keys. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) has not reached the same level of maturity yet as IBE, and will be a topic of further research in this project, since it opens up attractive new applications: like a teacher encrypting for her students only, or a company encrypting for all employees with a certain role in the company. On the user experience design side, efforts will be focused on making these encryption techniques really usable (i.e., easy to use, effective, efficient, error resistant) for everyone (e.g., also for people with disabilities or limited digital skills). To do so, an iterative, human-centred and inclusive design approach will be adopted. On a fundamental level, scientific questions will be addressed, such as how to promote the use of security and privacy-enhancing technologies through design, and whether and how usability and accessibility affect the acceptance and use of encryption tools. Here, theories of nudging and boosting and the unified theory of technology acceptance and use (known as UTAUT) will serve as a theoretical basis. On a more applied level, standards like ISO 9241-11 on usability and ISO 9241-220 on the human-centred design process will serve as a guideline. Amongst others, interface designs will be developed and focus groups, participatory design sessions, expert reviews and usability evaluations with potential users of various ages and backgrounds will be conducted, in a user experience and observation laboratory available at HAN University of Applied Sciences. In addition to meeting usability goals, ensuring that the developed encryption techniques also meet national and international accessibility standards will be a particular point of focus. With respect to usability and accessibility, the project will build on the (limited) usability design experiences with the mobile IRMA application.
