Land Ahoy! Understanding Submarine Command and Control During the Completion of Inshore Operations

Roberts, Aaron P.; Stanton, Neville A.; Fay, Daniel

doi:10.1177/0018720817731678

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…: a specialised activity). An exemplar subsection of the command team structure, that focuses on tactical picture generation, can be found in work by Roberts, Stanton, and Fay (2017). Operators will collect and process information under the guidance of senior operators/officers, who will use the information for strategic as well as tactical decision making .…”

Section: Command Teammentioning

confidence: 99%

All at Sea with User Interfaces: From Evolutionary to Ecological Design for Submarine Combat Systems

Fay

Stanton

Roberts

2019

Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science

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The quickening pace of technological advancement will require submarine command teams of the future to process greater volumes of data, potentially with fewer operators. User Interfaces (UIs) have evolved to meet current requirements, but this iterative process has propagated legacy design paradigms that may be unsuitable for future system specifications.To understand where improvements may be made, a review of current submarine control room operation is presented, using a sociotechnical systems approach. The social (command team: work, structure, and communication) and technical (combat systems) components are presented for context. An emphasis is placed on Sonar and Target Motion Analysis due to their prevalence within the control room. It was found that current UIs place increased cognitive requirements on operators due to the complexity and quantity of information presented. It is proposed that adopting an Ecological Interface Design (EID) approach could reduce such issues, facilitating effective resource allocation to manage increased data volumes. EID has been demonstrated to be effective across many domains, however, its exploitation in submarine control rooms is limited. Advances in modern submarine combat systems have promoted greater flexibility, providing an opportunity to utilise contemporary design philosophies for designing intuitive interfaces to maintain effective control room performance.The submarine control room is a complex sociotechnical system, formed of a highly trained command team and advanced combat system, with the objective of successfully completing missions in challenging environments, such as littoral waters (Roberts, Stanton, and Fay 2018).The system has evolved over time and so are highly evolved regarding operational capabilities, but this does not preclude further improvement. Technological advancements are frequently implemented without formal assessment of their impact from a sociotechnical perspective (Roberts and Stanton 2018). On submarine platforms, technological advancements are affording greater capabilities to meet changing requirements of operation (Bateman, 2011, Dominguez, Long, Miller, & Wiggins, 2006. These include new sensors and upgrades to existing sensors, producing larger volumes of data (Stillion and Clark 2015) with a drive to reduce crew sizes (Ly, Huf, and Henley 2007;Masakowski 2000). A critical question is whether such advances are being implemented with adequate consideration of the capacities of the operators, who already process large volumes of information. Of interest for potential improvements are the User Interfaces (UIs), which despite being highly advanced, have design shortcomings that limit operator performance, and the capacity of the entire control room. It is proposed that these issues could be addressed by switching from an evolutionary design paradigm to EID. Such a paradigm shift could allow future control rooms to meet future challenges and maintain effective operation.

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Section: Command Teammentioning

confidence: 99%

All at Sea with User Interfaces: From Evolutionary to Ecological Design for Submarine Combat Systems

Fay

Stanton

Roberts

2019

Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science

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“…Previous work provided valuable insight into the interactions between members of a submarine command team [10,2,11,12]. A shortened version of the Event Analysis for Systemic Teamwork (EAST) [11] method was used [10,2,11,12], which modeled systems as a network of networks [2]. Social network analysis revealed a 'bottleneck' between the Operations Officer (OPSO) and the Sonar Controller (SOC) [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social network analysis revealed a 'bottleneck' between the Operations Officer (OPSO) and the Sonar Controller (SOC) [12]. These operators communicated frequently in order to facilitate the building of an accurate tactical picture [10,11,12]. The SOC had to pass information (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is likely that if this link were to be broken, a significant deterioration in performance would be observed [11] as the TMA operators would not have received the required information to form an accurate tactical picture. A noted limitation of the work by Roberts et al, [10] was the absence of temporal evaluation of social and task networks as scenarios progressed. Timely completion of tasks is important for safe and efficient operation; for example, taking too long to find a solution for a detected vessel may endanger own ship via counter-detection [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, there is pressure to complete tasks quickly and accurately [14]. The current work aimed to build on the EAST analysis already conducted by the ComTET team [10,11,12], to evaluate the impact of 'bottlenecks' on the speed of information transition and frequency of task completion. The following predictions were made.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Investigating Temporal Implications of Information Transition in Submarine Command Teams

Pope

Roberts

Stanton

2018

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

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Previous work revealed bottlenecks in information transition between submarine command team members, which may be detrimental to overall performance. To date, the potential impact of such bottlenecks in terms of time to pass critical information has not been investigated. An understanding of the temporal impact is critical, given the time critical nature of tactical picture generation. Four teams of eight participants (32 participants total) were recruited and trained at one of the operator stations in a bespoke built submarine control room simulator. Participants completed high and low demand Return to Periscope Depth scenarios. The timings of technology-human and human-human interactions were calculated. Preliminary results indicated that the largest temporal lag was the transition of human-human information. Furthermore, loss of information occurred with every stage of information transition. As demand increased, the efficiency of information transition was negatively impacted by increased communications between operators. Initial results are discussed along with future analysis plans.

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How can human factors close the gender data gap?

Parnell,

Plant

2023

Hum Ftrs & Erg Mfg Svc

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This commentary paper will describe how the discipline of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) can help to close the gender data gap, which is prevalent across many domains and arises due to a lack of data capturing female metrics and viewpoints. HFE is a domain‐independent discipline that seeks to understand human performance and well‐being with respect to the interactions that humans engage in and the environments that they inhabit. HFE therefore presents an opportunity to understand how gender influences human performance, effective design, social interactions, and environmental factors. This paper argues that a sociotechnical systems approach is essential when reviewing equality, diversity, and inclusivity issues, without which attempts to close the gender data gap will not go far enough. Following the sociotechnical systems approach in HFE, the micro‐, meso‐, and macro‐levels of system design with respect to closing the gender data gap are reviewed. We discuss these issues in relation to a case study example of a crash test dummy. A checklist approach for researchers is presented, which identifies key questions that prompt where gender should be considered in the research process across these levels of sociotechnical systems.

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Land Ahoy! Understanding Submarine Command and Control During the Completion of Inshore Operations

Cited by 23 publications

References 47 publications

All at Sea with User Interfaces: From Evolutionary to Ecological Design for Submarine Combat Systems

All at Sea with User Interfaces: From Evolutionary to Ecological Design for Submarine Combat Systems

Investigating Temporal Implications of Information Transition in Submarine Command Teams

How can human factors close the gender data gap?

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