Simulating Cognitive Complexity in Work Systems

The Brahms Generalized Überlingen Model (Brahms-GÜM) is a cognitive-behavioral simulation of aviation work practices that reveals how normally complicated situations become cognitively complex for people in a dynamic environment of malfunctioning tools and non-routine workload. Brahms-GÜM was developed by analyzing and generalizing the roles, systems, and events leading to an aircraft collision, a scenario that can be simulated as a particular configuration of the model. Brahms-GÜM demonstrates the strength of the Brahms framework for simulating behaviors of asynchronous (or loosely coupled), distributed processes in which the sequence of spatialtemporal interactions can become mutually constrained and unpredictable.