Researchers from the Centre’s Sport and Outdoor Recreation theme were recently invited by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors to write an article for their Ergonomist magazine to showcase some of our sports ergonomics research. The article was published in the May-June edition (with thanks to Tina Worthy for all of her help and … More Engineering victory: systems ergonomics in sport

Over the past few years Centre members have published a series of short articles outlining our human factors research via The Conversation. These quick to read and easy to digest articles cover various topics ranging from the miracle on the Hudson, the fatal five driver behaviours and accident prevention to doping in elite cycling, urban planning … More Our Conversation articles

Tony Carden, PhD candidate In our recently published paper, we argued that recognition of the led outdoor activity system as complex has implications for how outdoor programs should be regulated, managed, designed, supervised and led. What could that look like in practice? For starters, I want to suggest that complex doesn’t mean difficult. Nor does … More What difference does complexity make in the outdoors?

The attached article by Clare Dallat provides an alternative and insightful perspective to identifying and managing sources of risk in a way that aligns with what the wider field of safety science now understands about how and why accidents happen. Using learnings from safety-critical domains such as aviation, healthcare and transportation, Clare offers practical and implementable … More A call to action around risk and injury prevention in outdoor education and recreation

Rail level crossings continue to represent a significant safety concern, both in Australia and worldwide.  This two day conference will share findings and practical implications from a recently completed four year program of human factors research funded by the Australian Research Council and the key Victorian road and rail agencies.  The research conducted had advanced … More Toward safer rail level crossings: a human factors approach

Testing the impact of providing concurrent verbal protocols on driving performance We are excited to announce that the first on-road study that we conducted using our ORCa instrumented vehicle has just been published in Ergonomics. Driving studies, conducted both on-road and in driving simulators, are increasingly utilising the concurrent verbal protocol methodology, whereby participants are instructed to … More ORCa’s first study published in Ergonomics

The dust continues to settle around the England football team’s early exit from Euro 2016 at the hands of relative minnows Iceland. The media have been quick to judge, using such terms as ‘catastrophe’, ‘disaster’, ‘failure’ and so on. England’s manager Roy Hodgson resigned immediately after the defeat to Iceland and the search is now … More If England’s exit is a catastrophe, lets treat it like one

Clare Dallat, Amanda Clacy and myself have just returned from a fascinating weekend studying the Rush Women’s National Road Series (NRS) cycling team at the Battle on the Border stage race at Kingscliff. We were there to collect data regarding the team’s decision-making and situation awareness during the race stages. This involved observing the races … More A Systems View of Performance in the Peloton

Centre researchers have just published a conversation article on the use of social network analysis methods to understand the goals scored during World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Social network analysis is used to understand network structures via description, visualisation and statistical modelling. It involves looking at people (nodes) and the connections between them. Our World … More Using network analysis to understand how goals are scored in football

Road safety efforts in Queensland are focused on reducing the “fatal five” behaviours that cause road trauma: fatigue, drink and drug driving, driving while distracted or inattentive, speeding and not wearing seatbelts. We want to understand, from Queensland drivers, the reasons why people might engage in these fatal five behaviours. We also want to gather opinions about how these … More Do you want to help improve safety on our roads?