On June 1st, 2009, 216 passengers of Air France Flight 447 died
Are 216 deaths acceptable? Hence, how can we improve?
First, we have to answer “What happened?”
1. Engineered system malfunction during the flight
2. Chaos and panic
3. Pilots fail to intervene…plane crashes
People die when socio-technical systems responsible for safety critical operations fail. Many times, we fail to account for the human-technology interaction in our designs.
ISE5984 explores the human-technology interaction in our design!
Course Announcement:
Course Title: ISE 5984 Soc Tech Sys-Pcpls, Conc, Des
Socio Technical Systems (STSs): Principles, Conceptualization, and Design
Spring 2023, Mondays 4-6:45PM
Instructor: K. Triantis (triantis@vt.edu), Grado Department of ISE, College of Engineering
Course Description:
⮚ Principles that provide the foundation for the conceptualization and design of socio-technical systems
⮚ Links among the domains of systems theory, systems thinking, complexity science, safety science, macro-ergonomics, organizational theory, risk analysis and systems engineering
⮚ A focus on applications in health care, safety-critical transportation infrastructure systems, information systems, and evacuation systems
⮚ Overview of modeling approaches to include functional, structural, and hierarchical system representations along with complex adaptive system formulations
⮚ Concepts demonstrated by in-class led discussions, individual research projects, and a team research project requiring translating basic theoretical tenets of socio-technical systems into practice by analyzing existing socio-technical systems