About the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre (HFI DTC)

Defence Technology Centres

The Ministry of Defence believes that there is a high payoff for UK Defence from collaboration within the broader UK science and technology community. Such collaboration means better equipment for MOD, more competitive products for industry and more opportunity for academia to exploit its ideas. For this reason the MoD has inaugurated a number of Defence Technology Centres (DTCs).

A DTC is a formal collaborative arrangement between industry and academic experts in a particular technology, funded jointly by participants and the MOD. The participants work together to generate and enhance the technology vital to the delivery of future UK Defence capabilities.

In April 2003 the MOD announced the inception of the 'Human Factors Integration' Centre which researches and demonstrates technologies to support the development of a range of defence capabilities. The consortium is led by Aerosystems International. Other members are Birmingham University, Brunel University, Cranfield University, Lockheed Martin UK Integrated Systems Ltd, MBDA Ltd, Systems Engineering and Assessment Ltd.

Human Factors Integration

Any system that has a human interface will have Human Factors or Ergonomics issues associated with it. Both these terms are used to describe a perspective on the design of products, systems, procedures and working environments that seeks to maximise overall effectiveness by considering the capabilities, characteristics and limitations of the human operators. The approach is to design the system around the people rather than requiring the people to adapt or work around poor designs and working environments that make operation difficult or even dangerous.

Human Factors problems contribute to system inefficiency or failure and there are many real life examples where this has happened. Most people can think of examples from everyday life where things are difficult to use through poor design. There are also high profile cases where Human Factors issues contributed directly to a serious accident.

Human Factors is an Engineering discipline that must be integrated with other Engineering disciplines such as Systems Engineering and Integration/Test to be effective, hence the term 'Human Factors Integration'.

A Brief History of the HFI DTC

During Phase 1 of the HFI DTC’s programme (2003-2006), a series of pure and applied human centred research projects were conducted, with both theoretical and experimental emphases. With valuable input from the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl), each of these was deemed strategically important to the future of the UK’s Armed Forces. The research encompassed a very wide range of disciplines, from command and control (in the context of “Network-Enabled Capability” NEC and ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) to the development of new software tools to support the real-time recording and prediction of individual and team performance, workload, error and situational awareness.

Other areas of endeavour included revisiting and “future-proofing” the topics of hierarchical and cognitive task analysis, analysing future defence requirements for training and education and addressing how to exploit synthetic environments (including the application of serious gaming technologies) for HFI endeavours in domains as diverse as defence medicine (battlefield trauma) training and experimentation with novel uninhabited vehicles. The Phase 1 HFI DTC research benefited from early application in a variety of field settings, including the emergency services, RAF E3D Sentry command and control aircraft, search-and-rescue helicopters, naval simulators, coastal patrol vessels, air traffic control and rail safety.

As can be seen in this Yearbook, a wide variety of deliverables have been produced with some notable early exploitation successes, such as the Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) Tool, which has been distributed to over 500 recipients at the time of writing. The HFI DTC has put in place significant NEC research facilities at the Universities of Brunel and Birmingham and boasts a strong cross- Consortium capability in Synthetic Environments.

Another Phase 1 success was the Process Improvement Cell (PIC) - a small group of HFI DTC researchers based at the DPA, Abbey Wood, whose role was to provide a link for MOD staff to HFI DTC research, work packages, outputs and events, to provide direction and guidance on HFI process issues and to provide support and training on HFI. More recently the PIC has been working closely to support the evolution of a dedicated HFI Cell within Abbey Wood, part of Technical Enabling Services (TES), with the aim of ensuring that HFI issues are managed effectively throughout acquisition cycles to achieve a solution that meets the end users’ needs, together with cost and performance targets.

Towards the end of the HFI DTC’s Phase 1 Programme, a change in the MOD’s original emphasis on research success criteria based on essential, desirable and HFI-specific outcomes was witnessed. Essential outcomes, for instance, included the ability to demonstrate that knowledge had been generated through research appropriate to future UK defence needs in relevant domains and that such knowledge could be exploited at the earliest opportunity for defence and other internal UK governmental applications. Desirable outcomes included reference to the importance of demonstrating both spin-in from and spin-out to the civilian sector, thus contributing to a much wider science and technology base. HFI-specific outcomes focused on issues such as reducing whole-life costs, improving operational effectiveness and reducing human error. The shift in emphasis was interpreted as a means of ensuring that the HFI DTC’s ongoing research would attract the support of military stakeholders, including those based in MOD Main Building - the Research Output Owners (especially the principal sponsors of the HFI DTC - Output Owners 2, 3a and 5), those operating within various specific defence research and development units across the UK, Integrated Project Teams (IPTs), DECs (Directors Equipment Capability) and the operational end users themselves.

Consequently, and over an 11-month Phase 2 planning period throughout 2005, significant effort was expended in the pursuit of stakeholder engagement. This effort involved collating suggestions and directives received from IPTs and DECs, information from HF literature and MOD Science & Technology events (including those specifically directed at future strategy, doctrine and R&D policies) and the views of relevant national and international groups (e.g. the DTI’s Human Factors and Synthetic Environments National Advisory Committees, The Technical Cooperation Programme (TTCP), NATO panels, and the MOD/Industry HFI Working Group). The resulting Phase 2 Research Programme, which formally commenced in April 2006, takes the form of five broad Research Themes:

Finally, in addition to the HFI DTC’s own Research Programme, the Consortium has embarked on a process of engagement with other defence consortia and groups, including the Haldane- Spearman Consortium, the Data Information Fusion (DIF) and Systems Engineering for Autonomous Systems (SEAS) DTCs, the NEC4CC (NEC for Close Combat), or Team Reach Consortium and the QinetiQ-led COTS EU (Commercial Off-The-Shelf Evaluation Unit). Such engagements will help to ensure a healthy interchange of HFI-related information, introduce additional exploitation channels (including new cross consortia research opportunities) and will undoubtedly help to maximise the value of the MOD’s investment in Human Sciences research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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