1.1. Research Background and Motives
Human errors are the actions or interactions which lead to the deviations from crew’s intentions or situational awareness. Human errors in the operations tend to reduce the margin of safety limitations and increase the possibility of accidents or incidents (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). Management policies, regulations, and standard operation procedures (SOP) are required to correct human errors..
The CRM (Crew Resource Management) is a “human factor” approach for improving the safety of transportation systems by preventing or managing human errors. Even though the air and land-based transportation systems have been recognized as safe modes of public transportation in the world given today’s technological development, human performance involved in the operating of those travel modes is something that cannot be ignored. Human factors approach is a multifaceted effort to develop information about human capabilities and limitation and to apply this information to manage personnel, equipment, systems, procedures, environment, and training (US GAO, 1997). Under this approach, crews are trained to recognize the potential risk and danger in the operations to prevent accidents and incidents.
The Crew Resource Management (CRM) was initially developed by US aviation industry in the 1970s to reduce air crashes caused by human errors. Researches in the US had found that the primary cause of the majority of flight accidents was human error caused by communication failure, poor leadership, and poor decision making in the cockpit. According to the study, the first accident used to describe the requirement for CRM training was from the investigation of the 1972 Eastern Airlines crash of an
L-110 airliner in the Florida Swamps. In this case, nothing had been wrong with the jet except that a light bulb had burned out. It went down because the whole crew were preoccupied, to a man, with trying to see if the landing gear position indicator had failed or not. The plane slowly descended into the swamps and killed most of the passengers and crew (Randall, 2013). Over a period of years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had therefore defined a requirement to implement training for flight crews in the management of cockpit resources to help prevent such accidents.
The CRM was then originally named as the Cockpit Resource Management.
After several decades of development and application, it has now been regarded as a great tool to improve flight safety. Today, the CRM technology has been spilled over to sectors other than the civic aviation industry. Although the CRM systems have been widely adopted in airlines, such systems are still rare in the land and sea transportation systems. Meanwhile, porting the CRM system for the civic aviation vehicles to the land and sea based systems is one of the most feasible ways to minimize both the time to market and the R&D cost. However, how the CRM systems being used in the airplanes can be ported to the land and sea based transportation systems is still to be explored.
In this research, the concept of product design and development method is employed to establish a configurable platform based model of CRM system for public transportations which is able to be modified or arranged differently to adapt for some specific purpose or particular application based on the various platforms used by the public transportations.
1.2. Research Purposes
This research aims to adopt the Delphi with DEMATEL and ANP methods to accomplish the following purposes: (1) Exploring the nature and risks involved in airline business and land and sea based public transportations; (2) Reviewing the business management from crew’s bottom up perspectives; (3) Utilizing the concept and theory of CRM to survey the management and decision making models of civil aviation with land and sea based public transportation systems; (4) Looking into the requirements for a workable CRM system with reference to the CRM policies established by the civil aviation authorities; (5) Constructing an optimum structure for enhancing overall operational safety and effectiveness.
1.3 Research Method
This research first uses the Delphi method to summarize opinions being provided by experts in the related fields of high-speed rail, commercial aviation, and search and rescue from the aspects of the system operations, technology proficiency, managerial decision making, operation control center’s command and control, crew education and training, work environment familiarity, interpersonal relationship, environmental factors, operation information usage, as well as risk management and crisis response.
Then it combines the use of the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) based Network Process (DNP) methods to solve the cause and effect relationship among the evaluation criteria and to derive interrelationship among factors.
Next, it uses the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method to determine the alternatives ranking for a compromise solution.
After identifying the key factors involved and their cause and effect relationship, a model of the CRM system can be established by applying product design and
development method. The CRM model can be explored from top-down support, teamwork building, situational awareness, and emergency control perspectives and must include the management level leadership guidance and operation command and control on the top. Crew interaction and backup support mechanism need to be in place to ensure a strong work team can be created. Surrounding environment’s effects and operational information sharing must be integrated horizontally to provide situational awareness. Finally, emergency control and handling mechanism including risk management and crisis response must be in place to ensure overall operational efficiency and safety. The analytic results can serve as the basis for establishing a configurable platform based CRM system for all public transportation systems.
1.4. Research Scope and Limitation
This research will look into the operations of civil aviation with land and sea based public transportation systems in the related fields of system operations, technology proficiency, managerial decision making, operation control center’s command and control, crew education and training, work environment familiarity, interpersonal relationship, environmental factors, operation information usage, as well as risk management and crisis response.
However, due to the author’s personal work experiences and invited experts’
knowledge, this research will have the following limitations: (1) this research will be based on the operations of civil transportation systems only; (2) due to different culture, the opinions will be derived from Taiwanese experts; (3) the verifications of the models will be based on empirical studies of civic transportation systems. This, the results can be controversial.
1.5. Expected Results
The following research results can be expected: (1) an understanding of the nature and risks being involved in the operation and management process of traffic systems by both the managerial level and the operational crew; (2) shaping the business culture from bottom up review to better appreciate the importance of operational safety; (3) rebalancing the operational efficiency and effectiveness with safety concerns; (4) constructing and implementing a configurable CRM platform to enhance the overall operational safety and effectiveness for both air and land-based public transportation systems.
1.6. Thesis Structure
This research begins with the research motive and purpose and uses the cases of civil aviation and high-speed rail operations to explore the feasibility of establishing a CRM system model for all public transportation systems. Next, the literature will be reviewed to look into the nature and characteristics of public transportation. Then the concept of the CRM and the evolution will be summarized. In order to have better understanding of the criteria that must be taken into consideration when constructing the CRM system, the Delphi Method was introduced based on the opinions being derived from eleven Taiwanese experts being employed in military and civil aviation, high-speed rail. The experts are with a minimum of five-year work experiences. After identifying the criteria, the DNP was introduced to derive the causal relationship as well as weights being associated with the criteria. Finally, based on the analytic results, a configurable CRM platform was constructed and verified. The research structure is as follows (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Research Structure