Eco-driving has been proposed as an approach to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions arising from personal automobile use. Eco-driving is the adoption of a measured driving style, minimising unnecessary breaking and aggressive acceleration. Eco-driving can be seen as a low cost and immediate approach to emission reduction as it involves the modification of drivers’ behaviours as opposed to the development and implementation of newer, more efficient technology. Despite the proposed benefits of eco-driving, numerous challenges are faced in order to encourage the adoption of these behaviours and maintain them long term. This narrative review presents the concept of eco-driving, with a focus on the long-term maintenance of these behaviours, including training programmes and feedback devices. It is clear within current literature that, despite the economic and environmental benefits of adopting eco-driving, drivers require feedback on their actions in order to promote long-term, behavioural, change.
Flight within degraded visual conditions is a great challenge to pilots of rotary-wing craft. Environmental cues typically used to guide interpretation of speed, location and approach can become obscured, forcing the pilots to rely on data available from in-cockpit instrumentation. To ease the task of flight during degraded visual conditions, pilots require easy access to flight critical information. The current study examined the effect of ‘Highways in the Sky’ symbology and a conformal virtual pad for landing presented using a Head Up Display (HUD) on pilots’ workload and situation awareness for both clear and degraded conditions across a series of simulated rotary-wing approach and landings. Results suggest that access to the HUD lead to significant improvements to pilots’ situation awareness, especially within degraded visual conditions. Importantly, access to the HUD facilitated pilot awareness in all conditions. Results are discussed in terms of future HUD development. Practitioner Summary: This paper explores the use of a novel Heads Up Display, to facilitate rotary-wing pilots’ situation awareness and workload for simulated flights in both clear and degraded visual conditions. Results suggest that access to HUD facilitated pilots’ situation awareness, especially when flying in degraded conditions.
Changes to crewing configurations in commercial airlines are likely as a means of reducing operating costs. To consider the safety implications for a distributed crewing configuration, system theoretic accident model and processes (STAMP) was applied to a rapid decompression hazard. High level control structures for current operations and distributed crewing are presented. The CONOPS generated by STAMP-STPA for distributed crewing, and design constraints associated with unsafe control actions (UCAs) are offered to progress in the route to certification for distributed crewing, and improve safety in current operations. Control loops between stakeholders were created using system-theoretic process analysis (STPA). The factors leading to the Helios 255 incident demonstrated the redundancy that a ground station could offer without the risk of hypoxia, during a decompression incident. STPA analysis also highlighted initial UCAs that could occur within the hypothetical distributed crewing configuration, prompting consideration of design constraints and new CONOPS for ground station design. Practitioner Summary: SPO in commercial aircraft is likely as a means to reduce costs. This paper makes a case for distributed crewing using STAMP-STPA. Comparing current operations with a distributed crewing configuration, the redundancy offered by a ground station is demonstrated. Design constraints and new CONOPs for distributed crewing, and current operations are proposed.