From the battle field to level crossings
Paul Salmon
Translating research on situational awareness from a military setting to urban streets has earned national recognition for safety researcher Dr Paul Salmon.
Dr Salmon, a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) post doctoral fellow from the Human Factors team at the Monash University Accident Research Centre has been named a finalist in the Humanities and Social Sciences category of the Scopus Young Researcher of the Year Awards for 2011.
The awards recognise the achievements of researchers aged 40 or under and no more than five years out from completing their PhD. The impact of the last two years of output are assessed.
Dr Salmon said he was delighted to be a finalist in the prestigious awards.
"I'm thrilled to have my research recognised in this way early in my career."
Dr Salmon's current research is an expansion of the theory of ‘situation awareness in collaborative systems’ developed during his PhD, which he initially applied to command and control systems such as land warfare.
"A well-designed system, be it industrial, military or road-infrastructure can greatly improve performance and reduce the incidence of severe accidents. A major aspect of good system design involves supporting situation awareness across all parts of the system," said Dr Salmon.
"For example, in the military the problem of ‘friendly fire’ typically comes down to situation awareness. People on the battlefield or commanders in control rooms may not be fully aware of everything they should be."
Dr Salmon is now applying his theory to road safety, supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellowship.
"I'm investigating, using on-road studies, how aware different roads users - drivers, motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians - are of each other. For example, it may be that road design supports awareness in one road user, but not in others. The aim of my research is to help develop road systems that better support situation awareness and so reduce accidents.
"I'm also using a similar approach to look at how to improve safety at railway level crossings."
Dr Salmon has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, ten books and numerous book chapters and conference articles. His work is highly cited by other researchers.
The Scopus Young Researcher of the Year Awards are presented by the Australasian Research Management Society and Elsevier. For more information see the Elsevier website.