Resilience Engineering now has a Technical Committee at the International Ergonomics Association (IEA)

By Tarcisio Saurin, Associate Professor, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul | saurin@ufrgs.br

As of January 2022, the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) has a new Technical Committee (TC) dedicated to Resilience Engineering (RE). In line with core human factors and ergonomics values, RE is systems-oriented and regards variability as an inevitable portion of everyday work, which is responsible for both desired and undesired outcomes. Therefore, the new TC acknowledges RE as a mainstream approach, which can benefit from and contribute to the broader human factors and ergonomics community. The main objectives of the TC are as follows:                       

  • Contribute to IEA conferences and other relevant conferences with special sessions, workshops, papers, and group meetings on resilience engineering;
  • Collect and share educational materials (e.g., lectures, videos, serious games) on resilience engineering;
  • Foster the dialogue of resilience engineering practitioners and academics with the broader human factors and ergonomics community; and
  • Support international collaboration on resilience engineering.

Main planned activities for 2022 – 2024:

  • Annual course(s) on RE with lectures given by leading international scholars. The course(s) will be run in the distance learning format;      
  • Webinars, occasionally in collaboration with other scientific associations; and     
  • Special session/workshop at the 2024 IEA Triennial Conference in South Korea.

Examples of topics of interest

  • Resilience engineering (RE) and safety management
  • Safety-II
  • Measurement of resilient performance
  • RE, climate change, natural and man-made disasters
  • Modelling of complex socio-technical systems
  • Contribution of digital technologies and industry 4.0 to resilient performance
  • Cyber-resilience
  • RE and sustainability
  • RE and naturalistic decision-making
  • Design for resilient performance
  • Design and management of resilient procedures, policies, and rules
  • Regulations and resilient performance
  • Leadership for resilient performance
  • Management of trade-offs in socio-technical systems
  • Cross-learning opportunities from RE in multiple sectors – e.g., healthcare, aviation, maritime, manufacturing, construction     

Contact Tarcisio Saurin for more information or to join this Technical Committee

E-mail: saurin@ufrgs.br