Pulsar Consulting | HF Case e-tool

HF Case e-tool

The HFCase Project is a web-based application, based on the Human Factor Case methodology (EATMP/DIS/HUM) and phases, allowing aeronautical experts and specialized psychiatrists to study the Human Factor impact during aeronautical incidents (e.g.: repeated computer malfunction).

It handles different kinds of HF Issues, like “Procedures, Roles and Responsibilities”, “Organisation & Staffing”, “Teams and Communication”, “Training and Development”, “Working Environment”, “Human in System”. It allows them to coordinate through Internet, by project, the different stages of a Human Factor Case, “Fact Finding”, “Issue Analysis”, “Action Plan”, “Actions Implementation”, “HF Case Review”, and their associated information. For users not connected to Internet, a standalone version exists, designed with Java Swing.

More Information

Please find the advanced prototype of the application here.

Project Scope

The HFCase Development project included:

building a database structure taking into account the requirements of several existing applications so that they can all store their data concerning the current project
giving support to these applications for accessing and using HFCase datawarehouse
developing a web-based application (called HFCase) that allows managing and visualizing HFCase datawarehouse data
developing a standalone application called HFCase Standalone that allows managing and visualizing offline HFCase datawarehouse data through EXML exported files.

Technology

The HFCase application was built using Pulsar's framework called GidPro (iRadExpert to register all pages, actions and navigation links and Pulsar’s class loader) and the following standard technologies:

Velocity, CSS and Javascript for writing the HTML pages
Struts actions as a link between business logics and database access
Oracle database and Cayenne as ORM layer
Eclipse as Java development environment
PowerDesigner to design and generate the original Oracle database
PLSQLDevl to manage the Oracle database
PLSQLDevl to manage the Oracle database
Tomcat as web application server
LDAP as User Authentification Repository
PDF report

The HFCase Standalone application was built using Java Swing:

Java 5
Swing: standard Java graphical user interface system
XStream as an XML ORM layer.

Main Principles

When an incident occurs, a project is created by the psychatric team. They follow the 5 stages of the diagram beside. These stages are defined by the Eurocontrol methodology for the incident’s management. All decisions made during these 5 stages are team decisions.
At the end of the process, a report is generated by the system for each stage. This report is downloadable as PDF document.

The following list contains all the situation which needs to be improved. For each element, there is a short description of the issue and a first proposal from ATM to resolve it.

A more complete description of the element is also given as comment.

This is the first real step of the project beside all the administration part.

The graphic presents the involvement ratio for each Issue for this particular project. Like many things in the application, the ratio are decided by the psychiartrics team.

Following the Eurocontrol methodology, the Human Factor can be involved in 6 different issues (categories of the piechart below). These issues are divided into workareas. A workarea is a subdivision of an issue (e.g.: for the issue ‘organisation & staffing’ you can choose the workarea ‘staff levels’).

Once the workarea is selected (here for example ‘Staff levels’), the screen “What if Questions” is displayed. A ‘what if’ is a fact explaining the current problem.
The Impact on Human Performance describes the impact of the what if on persons (e.g.: stress or fatigue increase).
The Impact on System describes the Impact of the what if on the system (e.g.: erroneous input that can lead to wrong data).
The Mitigation Strategies propose a way to resolve the what if.
The next step of the application is to give a prioritisation to the what if depending on several criteria.

The Action Plan is one of the important part of Stage 3. It produces a report where you can see important information regarding the mitigation strategies like:

Take action: when the psychatric team should consider the mitigation strategies.
Mitigation domain: the mitigation strategies are grouped by mitigation domains each assigned to a specific person who will be responsible for this domain (assigned to)
Suggested action required: actions to be taken for this what if.

This is the first step of Stage 4 allowing the user to give his feedback on the action actually taken regarding a mitigation strategy. The important part on the feedback are:

action taken:
status: could be ‘not started’, ‘ongoing’ or ‘finished’
reason: why this action is taken regarding the mitigation strategy
what went well
what could be improved
next step / closed: is another action needed (next step), or not (closed)
additional notes.

This screen is a part of the final HFCase report and gives a review of the issues. The psychiatric team will enter some data to give their conclusion on the impact of a particular issue on the project.

The Key Concern of the project allows to summarize the main concept concerning this issue.

The number of ‘What If’ related to an issue is also mentionned. This gives the importance of the issue regarding other issues.

The ‘Mapping with Findings from Actions taken in stage 4’ of the project allows to summarize the actions taken concerning this issue.