David D. Woods

Dr. David Woods was recently quoted in the April 2008 New Scientist article “Emergency 2.0″ regarding the potential of new social media and technology in disaster response.

Citing recent C/S/E/L research presented at ISCRAM 2008, Woods reflected:

This inappropriate reliance on the imagery data creates a false sense of awareness, at the expense of ignoring conflicting data from other modalities. Such an effect is a classic pattern of poor representation design in user-interfaces, the keyhole effect. A noted a similar pattern, given the UAV nature of delivery, is what Dr. Phil Smith has previously referred to as “the video game effect”.

Erik Hollnagel, David D. Woods and Nancy Leveson (editors)

Explores groundbreaking new development in safety and risk management, where ’success’ is based on the ability of organizations, groups and individuals to anticipate the changing shape of risk before failures and harm occur. Featuring contributions from many of the worlds leading figures in the fields of human factors and safety, Resilience Engineering provides provocative insights into system safety.

James Reason:
‘This is the most thought-provoking collection of papers I’ve read in a very long time. They are written by the best in the field at the top of their form. Resilience is a notion whose time has come. We cannot realistically expect to eliminate adverse events and still stay in business. But we can strive to achieve greater robustness towards our operational hazards. This book tells us how to do it and why it’s necessary.’

order Resilience Engineering

A forthcoming chapter on how sharp end practice bridges gaps to create resilience focused on health care.

Gaps draft chapter pdf

What research is needed to advance patient safety? Research to help tame complexity. See a forthcoming handbook chapter to appear in Handbook of Human Factors in Health Care: Taming Complexity pdf

Organized with Erik Hollnagel (University of Linkoping Sweden) and Nancy Leveson (MIT, USA) the International Symposium on Resilience Engineering, October 20-25, 2004, Soderoping Sweden with about 20 participants from over 10 countries.

Symposium Objective
“Research on human reliability, human performance, and organisational aspects of risk and safety have led to the emerging area of Resilience Engineering as an alternative to error tabulations and probabilistic risk management. Resilience Engineering has been proposed as the new field, which enhances organisations? ability to monitor/revise risk models and to target safety investments proactively despite ongoing production and economic pressures.

The objective of this symposium is to provide an opportunity for experts from around the world to meet and debate the presence and future of Resilience Engineering. Whereas many workshops are characterised by long presentations interrupted by short discussions, this symposium will consist of long discussions interrupted by short presentations.”

A brief account of Resilience Engineering: Resilience Engineering Brief pdf

An edited book is being prepared based on the Symposium results.

Contributor to “Organization at the Limit: NASA and the Columbia Disaster” (Blackwell) which provides lessons for all organziations. Download the chapter — Creating Foresight: Lessons for Enhancing Resilience from Columbia:
creating foresight pdf

Analysis of a medication misadministration and how it reveals generic patterns in collaborative distributed work. In particular the study highlights the role of cross checks in resilience and safety. The study appeared in a special issue of IEEE SMC Part A in November 2004. analysis of a misadministration pdf

Cognitive engineers face the same challenges in designing systems that users confront in working the tasks that the systems are intended to aid. A guide to overcome reductive biases in design. CTW00 pdf

Invited talk Conflicts between Learning and Accountability in Patient Safety.
Presented at the 10th Annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy. “Starting Over?: Redesigning the Medical Malpractice System.” DePaul Law School, Chicago IL, April 15-16, 2004.
Examines how blame-based systems of accountability block information flow and learning, exacerbate double binds and goal conflicts, and degrade cooperation. beyond blame pdf

Testimony to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the “Future of NASA” following the Columbia accident.

Written testimony: Creating Foresight pdf plus pictures of the hearing at Hearing Pictures html