Engineering-Based Approaches to Human Performance Modeling

Complex technological systems, such as aircraft, power plants, and weapons systems, almost always require humans to monitor, control and/or supervise their operations. These “engineered” systems are designed and developed using a variety of methods for analysis, testing and evaluation that rely heavily on mathematical models that describe the inanimate systems involved and the environment in which the system operates. The desirability, if not the outright need, to account for the human component in the design/development process for these combined person-machine systems, in a manner similar to that in which the rest of the system is treated, has given rise to a large number of models of relevant human performance. (We refer to these models as human performance models or, more concisely, as HPM’s.) The class of models that tend to consider the operator more from an engineering perspective than a psychological one can be viewed as engineering-based HPM’s.