Aviation Technologies and Human Error: a Research Literature Database and Analysis

Technological interventions are commonly introduced in aviation to prevent or mitigate human errors. Such interventions, however, may also create new opportunities for error and even result in new error types. To examine the relationship between human errors and technological ‘fixes’, a research literature database was created that links them together within a three-dimensional matrix, with axes for the human operator, the task, and the environment. Each of these axes, as well as the errors and technologies included in the database, are furthermore organized according to specific taxonomies. To allow for universal access to the database as well as to facilitate widely distributed contributions to its content, the database was published on the World Wide Web via a specifically designed interface. In this paper we describe the development of the web interface and evaluate the usability of the database, including both data entry and query functions