Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory

I've found that it's really hard to understand if my work is actually useful to support practitioners. And no, you don't have to fill up the comments with all of the examples of how it's NOT (but if you want to ... go for it!). We (the Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory) have been undertaking a rather ambitious research direction, with my gentle (gentle!) encouragement that all of our work needs to both enhance the theory AND support the someone being able to use that theory in their practice. In their work. We recently found out that the Resilience in Software Foundation found our work on Joint Activity Design (JAD) heuristics (which is ongoing ... stay tuned!) and found them to be very helpful in their work. So helpful that they created an excerpt that makes the work much more approachable and digestable for people that can use it right now. Folks in critical digital services are routinely working with increasingly sophisticated and capable computational tools/agents, which is exactly the situation that JAD heuristics were designed for. We hope that you find them useful, too! Thanks to #RISF for putting all of this together! https://lnkd.in/ejvGTJRm

Excited to share the?latest report?from our?Systemic Factors Influencing Risk Aversion?project with the?Air Force. Our study identified key systemic pressures that impact innovation behaviors in acquisitions and developed practical interventions to strengthen a culture of innovation. Grateful to our incredible partners at AFICC, sponsors?OSD and Air Force Contracting, and?The Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC) for making this exciting research possible. Always a joy to work with Mike Rayo, PhD and Laura Maguire, PhD!

We're excited to host Dr. Matthew Bolton on March 5 as part of ISE's new R. Allen Miller Lecture on Innovative Quantitative Modeling. Join us on March 5th, 4-5pm in 312 Cockins Hall for his seminar!

As we listen and learn from more and more organizations, I grow increasingly convinced that the most important ingredient to beginning and sustaining a New Look/New View/Safety II/Safety Differently/Capability-based/Adaptation-based aspect for your Systems Performance (notice I didn't say safety?) group is the willingness of your organization, however temporary, to spend $1 (Euro, peseta, etc.) or one minute of someone's time explicitly engaged in understanding and supporting what their people are doing RIGHT NOW to keep the system running, and keep it running safely. This requires a not-so-subtle mindset shift from management that the policies, procedures and other rules that they approve and implement WILL NOT KEEP THE SYSTEM SAFE. Improving the ruleset will likely improve system performance, but only over a narrow range of challenges. What management must also be willing to do is improve every worker's ability to keep the system running, and keep it running safely. If management's mindset is firm that workers working diligently to the rule is the only way to keep the system safe, then nothing else can be done. All safety activities will ultimately be aligned to this perspective. Learning teams will focus on learning what not to do next time. After-event investigations will ultimately find multiple root causes, and will miss the capabilities and adaptability required to keep the system running day-to-day and in the face of increasing challenge. Everything will be co-opted. Only when this mindset shifts will the organization be able to see the aspects and functions of the system that need to be preserved and supported. Then the real work can begin!

As our resident accident investigator and all around safety expert Shawn Pruchnicki reminds us, when you're really trying to understand something (like a helicopter/airplane accident over the Potomac River), "Don't fall in love with a theory." Complex adaptive systems are dynamic, obfuscating, and, well, complex! The relevant dynamics at play are rarely obvious or initially salient. Success over the long run hides the very things that keep the system running successfully. It takes expertise to unwind, unravel, unfurl, and understand! https://lnkd.in/eYYdpU9U

We published an article about two years ago about about how decisions are made to pursue prophylactic bilateral mastectomies (i.e., removing a both breasts after the cancer is detected in only one). Because of the way we did our data collection, we were able to reveal an aspect of the decision-making that has not had a lot of focus: the relative weight of patient's and physician's initial stance, how other factors play a role, and how the decision can change over time. We were struck by how much authority the patient has over this decision, even when the medical literature and the physician would discourage the procedure. The overriding factor was the strength of conviction of the patient, especially when the viewed the procedure as the "safest" choice. This flies in the face of what is often thought of as the typical patient/physician relationship: the physician lays out the likelihood of success and complications of each option, the patient considers it, perhaps influences the decision at the margins, and the decision is made. There is a cognitive systems engineering message here. All work is joint work. All decisions are joint decisions. If you make assumptions about the different dimensions of the joint activity architecture, you will probably misinterpret and misunderstand something important. https://lnkd.in/eajyZwVP

The Foundations of Resilience Engineering Video Series, created by Professors Mike Rayo, PhD and David Woods, began as a 20th-anniversary project and has since been shared globally with students, engineers, and scholars. The series introduces key Resilience Engineering concepts and has sparked positive feedback from the community. Future plans include expanding formats and incorporating real-world case studies. https://lnkd.in/gJe2G8mf

Our latest work on adaptation and innovation is now available from The Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC). In it, we share the results of what is facilitating and obstructing innovative behaviors, and also share the beginnings of a playbook on how to start a pragmatic program of continuous learning. It is this type of program that will allow organizations to adapt to our increasingly challenging and changing world.

Want to catch a glimpse of resilience engineering in action? Check out Lorin Hochstein ‘s post on near misses. Insightful and approachable, as always. Check out the comments on how some organizations are putting this into practice!

Excited to share our latest work on Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) contingency management! As part of NASA SBIR Phase II, the Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory in collaboration with Mosaic ATM, is leveraging model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and model-based simulations to develop a contingency planning toolkit for AAM operations. This effort aims to use model-based systems engineering techniques and model-based simulations to analyze and create a contingency planning toolkit for AAM. A key outcome of this work was recently presented at AIAA SciTech 2025 by Alicia Borgman Fernandes, CSEL alum and R&D Business Unit Manager at Mosaic ATM. Our paper, titled “Use of Model-Based System Engineering to Drive UAM Contingency Management Procedure Design,” explores how MBSE can be used to better support contingency procedures in Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations. Read the full paper here:?https://lnkd.in/g9ptfrbG To look at the news article on the CSEL website click on: https://lnkd.in/gzUUVQKH For previous publications from this project, check out this page: https://lnkd.in/gaYAdsKJ Looking forward to discussions and collaborations on advancing AAM . #AAM #UAM #ModelBasedEngineering #NASA #CSE&CSE #AIAASciTech #SimulationEvaluation