Advanced Research Workshop 2008
Human Systems Integration to Enhance Maritime Domain Awareness for Port/Harbour Security Systems
Opatija, Croatia (December 8-12)

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In 2005 the members of the organizing committee of this ARW organized the ARW 981703 http://canadiannatomeetings.com/arwestonia2005/index.htm, which was mostly focused on building an understanding of policies for technology experts and an understanding of technologies and methodologies for building situational awareness for the harbor policy makers. This ARW identified a very large number of issues/topics that need to be investigated further. One of the major issues identified was the requirement to apply Cognitive Engineering to develop harbour security systems, to provide training, and to other products that support cognitive functions in decision-making, situation assessment, course-of-action selection, resource allocation and other information processing tasks.

Traditionally, Systems Engineering has mostly focused on the technological aspects of system design, such as hardware, software and automation, while often ignoring the fact that these systems will ultimately be used in the service of humans to meet the demands of work domains. Human Factors helps ensure optimal performance by applying principles of human physiology and cognition to the design of tools, systems, procedures, and work environments. Human Factors asks not only 'What do you need?' but also 'How do you need it?'.

Port Security is achieved through joint operations of a large number of systems and technologies. With time these systems and technologies become more and more complex to be able to deal with more and more complex security threat situations. In order to help the operators to cope with the data overload in such systems and to increase the performance, there is a growing need to provide them with automated support systems. Nevertheless, many automated systems are being developed without sufficient consideration of human factors issues. Hence, the deployment of automated systems does not necessarily simplify the user's task and guarantee a better performance. Moreover, it can create several types of uncertainties and can lead to catastrophic errors, especially in complex environments where multiple dynamic components are present. In order to adapt the new automated systems to human operator the cognitive engineering techniques should be integrated into the process of system development, i.e. there should be integration between cognitive engineering and system engineering. To optimize human performance within any system, it is important that systems designers adequately address human issues early and often in the design and development of that system. Systems engineers must work hand-in-glove with human factors engineers.

Currently there is much work on-going on policy development which can help to optimise the security system in harbours/ports, however as reported in a report published by the Ministry and Trade and Industry of Finland in 2006 (GROWTH project GRD2-2000-30122 "ARCOP") most errors and incidents in ports are due to human factors.

The organising committee of this ARW has invited a mixed group of Port Security Domain Experts, Human Factors and Human Systems Integration Experts as well as Decision Support Technology Experts aiming to provide a better understanding of how these experts can understand each others issues and collaborate together to build enhances port security systems.

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