Resilience in Operators, Technologies, and Systems

Changes in technology, particularly for example in commercial air operations, have led to incremental increases in the number and variety of associated safety procedures and checklists. This work addresses concerns about how people and systems respond to unanticipated events, as applicable to such commercial air operations, and to examine whether these “
if–then
” approaches prove sufficient to respond to prospective operational uncertainties. The current work draws from the literature on systems resilience, cognitive flexibility, and adaptation to consider how response strategies that are integrated into human–machine training at all levels of operation can aid in effective resolution to such unanticipated events. A number of scientific insights, methods, and domains are identified as being able to be employed to avoid catastrophic failure in current and prospective operational environments. While heuristics for advisement do provide an initial level of defensive protection, evolving airspace operations need to be adaptive to, and resilient in respect of, emerging and even unanticipated challenges. Prospective response strategies need to encompass both the demands that can be evidently foreseen and those that remain at present, indeterminate. Resilience in responding appears to be a primary dimension of success in relation to these challenges. The information herein distilled can increase operator performance and aviation systems’ response to nonproceduralized and unanticipated events as well as being applied to a vast array of other safety-critical operations beyond this one realm.