Barry Kirwan – författare

Safety regulation is society's way of keeping the genie of technology in the bottle, whilst still exploiting its power for creating wealth and change. It is a difficult compromise to make. Regulators often have a thankless task. If all seems to go well they are painted as too repressive and anti-technological; if disaster strikes, the searchlight of media attention increasingly focuses on them, looking for lax enforcement, blind eyes being turned and cosy relations with the regulated. This title explores the dilemmas of the regulator through case studies presented by the regulators themselves and through research-based analyses from different disciplines of the workings of the regulators and the regulatory system. More importantly it surveys the tools available to resolve the dilemmas and asks what we know about their successes and shortcomings and what can be learned over the boundaries of industries and technologies about the principles of successful safety regulation. Chapters are written by authors from seven countries, with an international perspective. They examine the role of certification, safety cases, strictly enforced detailed rules, professional regulation and self-regulation. The text covers new risks such as those from medical devices and biotechnology, as well as the well-known fields of nuclear power, chemical plants, mining, oil and gas production, railways and the traditionally difficult area of small companies.

In research and application of Human Factors in Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems design, development and operation, there remains a lack of clarity regarding the range and integration of activities associated with the need for greater attention to issues such as human error, interface design and teamwork, especially in systems with increased levels of automation. This book seeks to redress this situation by presenting case studies of human factors applications in which there is demonstrable success in terms of improvement in operational systems. Individual examples are used to outline how each human factors study evolved, what it entailed, how it was resourced and how the results contributed to operational performance. Case studies include training methods, human error, team resource management, situation assessment, terminal automation replacement systems, collaborative decision-making to improve the effectiveness of traffic-flow management and the role of human factors in ATM.