Registration

        Time: 14:00-18:00

        Room: Inside Annapolis Room

Workshop

       Time: 15:30-18:00

        Room: Inside Annapolis Room

given by GyuHyun Kwon & Tonya Smith-Jackson

TITLE:  Socio-cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of sensemaking: cases of public safety communication systems and military command and control

Objective:

To develop knowledge and skills in socio-cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of complex systems.

Part 1: Socio-cognitive aspects of sensemaking: a case of public safety communication systems

Emergency situations, intrinsically, are wicked problem sets.  They are highly distributed and require quick decision-making at the individual as well as organizational levels.  As a key enabler to ensure cooperation among team members or different agencies in large public safety operations, the concept of organizational sensemaking has been appreciated over the past decade.  Sensemaking is an on-going process of understanding an unfamiliar, ambiguous, information-rich situation.  Making sense relies heavily on stakeholders’ past experience, cognitive ability, culture, context, as well as what other people related to tasks are thinking and doing.  Hence, understanding the socio-cognitive aspects of sensemaking is critical in terms of both management and engineering efforts to achieve shared goals in the public safety domain.   In this workshop session, we will review socio-cognitive aspects of sensemaking in the context of public safety communications.  As a conceptual medium between sensemaking and complex communication systems, the concept of semantic interoperability will be introduced.  Finally, we will suggest a methodology of how socio-cognitive properties of sensemaking can be utilized as a core concept to design complex communication system functions using the Abstraction Hierarchy. 

Part 2:  Socio-cultural attributes of sensemaking in Command and Control

Command and control systems are sociotechnical systems consisting of personnel who rely on technology and information systems to distribute knowledge and support decision-making under stress and uncertainty. Demands for intercultural considerations regarding both opposition forces and civilians have increased the need for culturally-competent sensemaking decision support systems. Sensemaking, in and of itself, is a complex phenomenon that is made even more complex when an additional cultural layer is introduced. This workshop will address the inter-cultural factors that apply to sensemaking in command and control environments that must consider local culture and the culture of the opposition. Such models as the Cultural Lens model will be applied to decision-support systems in cross-cultural/inter-cultural environments.

Take-away for attendees:

•Understanding general concepts of socio-cognitive sensemaking;

•Getting familiar with the concept of semantic interoperability to support socio-cognitive semsemaking process

•Experience with designing complex communication systems using Abstraction-Hierarchy

•Application of the cultural lens model to design usable and culturally competent decision support systems.

•Recognition of critical cultural attributes that should be considered when designing culturally competence decision support systems.

•Understanding general methods to assess and evaluate systems for cultural competence and cultural usability.

Track 1: Human Factors, Miller (Chair), Benjamin Osafo-Yeboah (co-Chair)

16:30-17:45, at Room: Annapolis

16:30-16:45 - Simulating the effect of divided attention on driving performance

Ashley McBryde  (REU) & Emma Codjoe

16:45-17:00 - Simulating the effect of driver reaction to signals and crash at intersections

Persephone Johnson (REU)  & Hanniebey Wiyor

17:00-17:15 - A neurophysiologic study of stress on assembly task

Amani Foster (REU)  & Yomi Balogun

17:15-17:30 - Error analysis of human operator’s interaction with a computer-based shop floor control system

Bagley/Ntuen/Jiang/Mountjoy

17:30-17:45 - The complexity of leadership selection: Lessons from literature review

Robinson/Ntuen