From the General Co-Chairs

INCOSE International Conference on Human Systems Integration, HSI2021, will be held virtually from 16 t o19 November, 2021. Save the date! HSI emerges from the combination of human-centered design (HCD) and systems engineering (SE) as a highly participative and incremental process. In 2020, INCOSE and IEA (International Ergonomics Association) signed a Memorandum of Understanding that fosters this combination. We are proud to co-chair this conference.

HSI requires creativity (thought as synthesis and integration) as well as experience awareness and validation (thought as experimental tests, operations quality analysis, discovery of emergent properties, standards, and so on).

Modeling and simulation capabilities tremendously improve possibilities of taking into account human factors during the early stages of engineering design and throughout the entire life cycle of systems. Operational personnel can be involved in virtual operations tests using human-in-the-loop simulations to determine appropriate requirements for effective design and development.

The conference intends to inspire and engage researchers, innovators and practitioners in productive discussions of how technologies, organizations, jobs and responsibilities of operations actors, engineering designers, certifiers, trainers, maintainers and many other technology stakeholders can be reshaped to meet near and long-term goals of safe, efficient and comfortable operations.

HSI2021 will continue the discussions started during HSI2019 in Biarritz, France, and collaborative work done during the last year in INCOSE HSI Working Group. Successful HSI workshops have been held in 2020 despite COVID pandemic. We invite papers on visionary and transformational ideas and “out-of– the-box” thinking that can move industrial operations in new directions. The question “Digital People?” will be the primary focus of HSI2021. We are moving into a deeper digital society where people should keep control and management of affairs in the most tangible way. Therefore, we encourage the dialogue between industrial sectors that includes aeronautics, space, medicine, automotive, oil and gas, defense as well as other fields involved in Industry 4.0 and more generally systems that are more digital.

HSI2021 will bring together manufacturers, operators, government, research centers and academia to focus on improving industrial teams of teams. The current economic environment puts additional pressure on all of us to make industrial operations more efficient and affordable. We invite you to submit innovative methods, techniques, tools and technology that can lead the way. This includes laboratory research and field investigations, industrial developments and perspectives. While the primary focus is on HSI, we will consider papers on a wide range of topics including design, evaluation, certification and rule-making, training, maintenance, in-service experience and incident/ accident investigation.

HSI2021 is organized in cooperation with IEA, ACM and Air and Space Academy.