Human-variability-aware Safety Analysis Framework for Interactive Technologies of Critical Command and Control Systems

Command and Control Systems (CCS) are dependability-critical socio-technical systems, which encompass organizations, trained operator(s), and interactive technology designed to support the operator(s) in command and monitoring tasks. For instance, the CCS for Flight Safety Operations at the Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou supports the operator(s) in the monitoring of the trajectory and flight parameters of a launcher, and in commanding the eventual destruction of the launcher if the trajectory deviates outside of the pre-defined safety envelope. To ensure dependability, the congruence between the interactive technology and the operator is key. Indeed, the interactive technology must tolerate human-variability in terms of faults which may occur at perceptive, motor, and cognitive levels and which may lead to human errors. To assess dependability of new interaction technologies, we propose a systematic human-variability-aware safety analysis framework, called P-VASA. The framework takes into account the input and output devices, their associated interaction techniques and the operator’s task and is applicable to any CCS involving interactive technologies.