From flight data monitoring to rail data monitoring

Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) is the process by which data from on-board recorders, or so-called ‘black boxes’, is analyzed after every journey in order to detect subtle trends. These trends, in turn, are useful in providing leading indicators of issues relating to fuel economy, maintenance, passenger comfort and safety. An opportunity has been identified to advance the state of the art in FDM processes by coupling recorder data to established Human Factors methodologies so that issues arising from the problematic human/system interface can be better understood and diagnosed. The research has also identified a significantly underused source of recorder-data from the railway industry. This paper, therefore, describes the overall concept of applying Human Factors methods to this new data source, and the knowledge exchange that is currently underway between the rail and aviation sectors.