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What role can Human Factors and Ergonomics practitioners perform to pave the path to evolving sustainability in design? Being “green” is often perceived to cost money, requires a commitment of resources even when there is not an apparent return on investment (ROI), sometimes it is just about being a good global citizen and responsive to the plight of our planet, with no direct perceived monetary benefit (perhaps ever). This panel will be a social impact discussion hosted by the HFES Sustainability Taskforce. The participants will include HFES attendees in the audience along with Academia, Industries, and Influencers in the area of sustainability. This is an open forum for brainstorming, gathering actionable ideas to charter HF/E influence in sustainable design to support our planet. Industries are chasing sustainability goals and looking for measurable sustainability targets as indicators of success. Let HFES help by guiding future & current practitioners who can help achieve goals.

This paper provides a scoping literature review of research methods that seek to measure individual productivity and organisational performance in office buildings containing enhanced green building features and initiatives that focus on Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). The paper follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) framework and includes thirty-nine academic papers for the period 2000 to 2020. Different research instruments are discussed, including post-occupancy evaluations (POE), longitudinal surveys, and interviews. Furthermore, a narrative focuses on specific measures, including location, amenities, comfort, engagement, individual productivity, and organisational performance. This provides insight into common research approaches and highlights where lesser used research approaches could be applied in the field of green building features and initiatives (GBFIs), including the assessment of individual productivity and organisational performance. Key findings highlight that individual productivity was measured via self-assessment in previous research. At the same time, there has been no research that has successfully measured organisational performance within the context of GBFIs. Gaps have been identified in the literature concerning the relationship between knowledge-based building occupants and measuring/monetising the implementation of GBFIs. Implications of this research indicate that there are common approaches that highlight both strengths and, more importantly, weaknesses concerning linking GBFIs to individual productivity and organisational performance. Addressing weaknesses that predominantly encompass measuring organisational performance creates the opportunity for future research in this field.

Although a significant amount of research has already been published, the field of ergonomics/human factors and sustainability (E/HF-S) has not yet been systematically profiled based on recent studies. Conducting a systematic review of the literature, this article aims: (i) to identify the main emergent research themes in this subject area and (ii) to provide future directions for applied research and practice on E/HF-S. Six emergent research themes were identified in this literature allowing for a proposal to synthesise the main concepts related to E/HF-S. However, it was noted that there are still relatively few empirical papers which assess the models being developed or that apply E/HF principles to sustainability challenges. Thus, this paper identifies the opportunities for practical application related to E/HF-S. The last part of the paper explores the E/HF-S opportunities using an external framework; the United Nations' sustainable development goals.

Addressing wastewater infrastructure needs in urban informal settlements must simultaneously address legacies of past failures, current aspirations and constraints, as well as increasingly changing needs related to global environmental change. This study applied the Sustainable System-of-Systems framework for ergonomics and human factors to gain a better understanding of how small in-situ constructed wetlands could be a form of greywater treatment infrastructure in an informal settlement. Using 24 months of interviews, surveys, workshops and photo-ethnographic observations, we identified that the rapidly changing nature of parent (e.g. residency transience and land ownership) and sibling (e.g. housing and drinking water) systems put pressure on the target wetland system to adapt, often decreasing its capacity to deliver the service of water cleaning. Greywater treatment was not a common goal among stakeholders involved in the nested hierarchy system which likely contributed to the constructed wetlands needing to adapt to remain relevant. Practitioner summary: The value of the Sustainable Systems-of-Systems framework for ergonomics/human factors professionals in determining the sustainability of an ergonomics/human factors intervention is demonstrated using a greywater treatment system case study for an urban informal settlement. Understanding the variety of stakeholder goals and the pace of change in related systems was key to a sustainable intervention. Funding Agencies|WRC (South Africa) [K5/2953]; Formas (Sweden) [2018-02217]; BMBF (Germany) [02WGR008]

Consumer perceptions are key to the success of strategies to address water scarcity. A decision pathway survey was used to investigate attitudes amongst South Africans (N = 668) in urban areas towards four alternative water sources. Results showed that storm and rainwater harvesting was the most (49.7%), and reclaimed wastewater the least acceptable options (15.7%). Direct potable reuse was the most supported alternative (26.6%), followed by indirect potable reuse (22.2%), reuse with additional piping (18.3%), direct non-potable reuse (8.3%), and indirect non-potable reuse (6.8%). Importantly, information provision led to a >66% increase in reclaimed wastewater acceptance amongst those initially opposed to it. In contrast, support for desalinated water and water restrictions decreased. Information provision also led to greater acceptance for direct relative to indirect reuse in situations of severe water scarcity. Together, the data suggest a role for information in influencing attitudes towards alternative water sources amongst consumers.

Humanity is facing our greatest challenge ever: to address run-away global temperatures and ecosystem degradation threatening civilization as we know it. Human factors and ergonomics have much to contribute in partnering with industry, government, academia, and society as a whole, to stop the destruction of our home, and evolve systems to sustainably provide clean energy and other resources needed to feed, clothe, house, sanitize, and transport humans. In this poster, we present a sampling of ways ergonomists, human factors researchers, and practitioners are already engaging in work to support environmental sustainability, as well as areas in which HFE could be applied to support progress toward sustainability goals. Examples presented include contributions from members of the HFES Sustainability Task Force. We share this with the HFES community both to inform work completed and in-progress as well as to inspire the participation of others in this important work.

This study investigated whether indoor plants were as effective as a guided meditation for enabling psychological recovery after fatigue induced by the abbreviated vigilance task. Sixty students were randomly assigned to an indoor plant, guided meditation, or control rest-break condition. The psychological processes most in need of recovery were identified as cognitive and affective restoration. Measures of affect, stress, and working memory were taken before and after the vigilance task, and again after a rest intervention. The vigilance task-induced fatigue as shown by a significant vigilance decrement and also significantly lowered positive affect and cognitive engagement, and significantly increased distress across all three conditions. After exposure to the break interventions, distress significantly decreased for participants in the indoor plant break condition while distress significantly decreased and engagement significantly increased in the guided meditation break condition. Indoor plants and guided meditation had a small, but significant positive impact on affective restoration and no significant impact on cognitive restoration.

BACKGROUND: Sustainability is a highly important theme worldwide and currently is being tackled by almost all disciplines. Indeed, the future of humanity is dependent on the actions taken now and in the immediate future. The Ergonomics and Human Factors (E/HF) community has not been indifferent to this issue, and one of the concrete actions adopted by the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) was the establishment of the “Human Factors for Sustainable Development” (HFSD) Technical Committee. OBJECTIVE: To identify future paths of action, this paper recognizes the trajectory of the HFSD Technical Committee, summarizes the contributions presented at IEA2021, the International Congress on Ergonomics held virtually in Vancouver in 2021, and reflects on key aspects that should be boosted by the Technical Committee. METHODS: This is a qualitative interpretative study that reflects on the contributions of members of the HFSD community working on E/HF for sustainability. RESULTS: Central topics and opportunities in E/HF and sustainability include complexity of systems, behaviors, and work; energy use and consumption; co-design, interconnectivity, territories, and the relationships with stakeholders. CONCLUSION: Although the contributions have been growing, there is still a lot of work needed, both theoretically and practically. Themes to be discussed include the concepts of sustainability and work. Considering the centrality of human beings (i.e., decision making for achieving the different dimensions of sustainability), the authors identify a set of values as core principles for leading the discussion.

Human Factors/Ergonomics (HF/E) is a systems discipline focused on jointly optimizing human well-being and overall system performance. Societal problems, including but not limited to health inequity, racism, poverty, and (lack of) sustainability, are inherently systems problems that involve humans, and so recent work has argued that HF IE can and should contribute to addressing these issues. This panel will bring together leaders of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) to discuss if and how HFES can encourage and support responsible, timely, and participative ergonomics to address societal issues. The session will be highly interactive as the organizers will moderate discussion to reflect on the progress the science and Society (i.e., HFES) have made in this space, identify areas for improvement, and creatively consider future actions to ensure our science and Society are responding to these issues in an ethical manner.

The ecological crises faced by humanity require all disciplines to think differently about how we interact with the ecosphere to prevent untold misery and possible human extinction. The fact that these crises are primarily caused by human mismanagement of our environment means that ergonomics (literally meaning the study of human work) should play a key role in understanding and ameliorating these negative effects. This article introduces Thatcher and Yeow’s (2016) sustainable system-of-systems model for ergonomics to the South African ergonomics community. The sustainable system-ofsystems model blends ecological models of systems with social models of ergonomics systems to create a new model that encapsulates this eco-socio-technical systems thinking. This article focuses on aspects of complex adaptive systems and resilience thinking to show where ergonomics might contribute to the creation of resilient and sustainable systems. The article concludes with a set of challenges that need to be considered when creating sustainable work systems that demonstrate resilience over time.

In South Africa, railway occurrence numbers have remained unchanged over recent years despite stakeholder goals aiming for zero occurrences, suggesting that there is an important need to examine why the numbers have not decreased. This is despite accidents being investigated by the various stakeholders in the rail socio-technical system. A failure to properly identify the underlying causes for incidents may be a possible reason for the number of recurrences. If occurrences are being investigated, why then do the number of occurrences remain largely unchanged? It is proposed that perhaps there are systemic factors within the railway system that influence the investigation process and therefore its effectiveness. Rasmussen’s (1997) Risk Management Framework is used to illustrate the South African railway system and to determine the systemic factors for each level of the system impacting on the effectiveness of occurrence investigations. A qualitative, multi-method approach was adopted. The research highlighted that there are indeed systemic factors that hinder the system’s ability to facilitate a learning culture. Results suggest that there is a distinct lack of mutual trust, transparency, feedback, and sharing of information, and no just culture across the entire system. The results of this research indicate that in the railway system, learning from previous accidents does not always happen. This is largely attributed to a number of systemic factors inherent in the larger railway system that influence the effectiveness of the entire investigation process. It is concluded that failure to identify what really happened during an occurrence and therefore the validity of the recommendations impacts on the system’s ability to learn from such events.

Understanding what motivates people to act on climate change provides an opportunity to design more effective interventions, in particular, climate services interventions, by aligning them with factors that strongly influence action. Climate change risk perceptions have been shown to underlie action on climate change. Therefore, this study performs exploratory research to understand how various determinants of risk perceptions contribute and interact to influence climate change risk perceptions and professional action on climate change in East Africa, in order to inform the context-specific design of climate services. Using data collected through a region-wide survey, a model to risk perceptions and professional action was constructed through structural equation modeling. The model elucidates the cascading effects of variables such as age, gender, education, and personal values on action. In particular, it highlights a split in motivating factors among individuals with higher levels of self-enhancing values versus those with higher levels of self-transcending values. The model also highlights the prominent role that experience of extreme weather events, psychological proximity of climate change, climate change risk perceptions, and social norms play in motivating action. The model, therefore, offers a framework for prioritizing the various factors that motivate people to take adaptation action, which, in turn, provides a basis for informing climate services development going forward.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and critically evaluate previous research that examines the link between green office buildings and the productivity of commercial building occupants. The o...

There is an increasing need and interest for Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) professionals to apply our discipline to a larger context. HFE researchers are starting to conduct research outside of traditional settings, focusing their efforts on complex societal challenges; however, this type of work is still in its infancy and there is a need to define how HFE can be used in broader contexts, outside of formal institutions. In this panel, we begin a formalized conversation of how our field can scale its impact. Each panelist will introduce a societal challenge they are addressing and discuss how HFE can be adapted to this context. The topics of this panel will span elections technology, sustainability and climate change, universal access to mental healthcare, social isolation in older adults, and food insecurity. This session will conclude with a moderated discussion between the panelists and audience to brainstorm specific societal challenges that HFE can address as well as how methods can be adapted to this context.

China’s mobility turn has created the world’s largest public rail system, contributing extensively to citizens’ economic, social, and spatial mobility. Concurrently, this technological transformati...

Sustainability is a systems problem with humans as integral elements of the system. However, sustainability problems usually have a broader scope than socio-technical systems and therefore, require additional considerations. This requires a fuller integration of complex systems understanding into the systems analysis toolset currently available to human factors and ergonomics. In this paper, we outline these complex systems requirements necessary to tackle global problems such as sustainability and then assess how three common systems analysis tools (i.e. Accimap, System Theoretic Accident Mapping and Processes, and Cognitive Work Analysis) stand up against these revised criteria. This assessment is then further explored through applying two of these tools (i.e. Accimap and System Theoretic Accident Mapping and Processes) to a transnational food integrity system problem. This case study shows that no single systems analysis method can be used in isolation to help identify key insights for intervention and that new methods may need to be developed or existing methods need to be adapted to understand these dynamic, adaptive systems. The implications for the further development of systems analysis tools are discussed. Practitioner summary: We assess the applicability of existing human factors and ergonomics systems-analysis tools for examining global problems and for identifying points to intervene in these systems. We comment on what extensions and further work will be required to enable human factors and ergonomics to intervene effectively. Abbreviations: HFE: human factors and ergonomics; CO2: carbon dioxide; CO: carbon monoxide; O3: ozone; SSoS: sustainable system-of-systems; BSE: bovine spongiform encephalopathy; STAMP: systems-theoretic accident model; CWA: cognitive work analysis; WDA: work domain analysis; ConTA: control task analysis; StrA: strategies analysis; SOCA: social and organisation cooperation analysis; SOCA-CAT: social and organisation cooperation analysis contextual analysis template; SOCA-DL: social and organisation cooperation analysis decision ladder; WOP: work organisation possibilities; FRAM: functional resonance analysis method; US FDA: United States Food and Drug Administration; UK: United Kingdom; NET-HARMS: networked hazard analysis and risk management system; PreMiSTS: predicting malfunctions in socio-technical systems.

This study looks at urban informal settlements, a common feature of many cities in developing countries that arise when rapid urbanization is not supported by adequate social and physical infrastructure. This study looks at the application of the Sustainable System-of-Systems framework for human factors and ergonomics in an urban informal settlement. Using twelve months of photo-ethnographic and interview data, this paper shows how the four elements of this framework can be identified and how they might be applied to improve the design and implementation of a sustainable intervention to treat greywater effluent and improve the health of the environment.

The slow adoption of sustainable technologies is cause for concern in an increasingly resource strained world. This study attempts to build on two main bodies of research: (1) a general technology adoption framework; i.e. the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and (2) work on the psychological design for affect; i.e. affective design. The purpose of this study is to report on the development and psychometric properties of the scales that will be used to assess the adoption of the Interface® Urban RetreatTM carpets (a sustainable carpet using recycled materials and possessing biophilic characteristics) in a follow up study. The Semantic Differential Scale developed for these carpets produced a wide range of affective qualities. The scale did not, however, support the underlying structure of Evaluative, Potency, and Activity as proposed by Osgood et al. (1957). The UTAUT scales presented with reasonable to good internal reliability and with the exception of ‘perceived effort’, the subscales were correlated with intention to adopt. Based on these two preliminary studies, the scales will be revised and then administered to determine the complementary roles of the utilitarian factors (based on the UTAUT) and emotional factors (based on the semantic differential scale developed for this purpose).

IEA 2018, the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics and Human Factors Association was a great success in terms of participation from different parts of the world (scientific work was presen...