Development and validation of a "scientifically based" software that predicts work-related fatigue in the aeronautical industry

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Fatigue management is a prime safety concern in the transportation industry. The objective of this proposal is to validate a scientifically-based software that predicts work-related fatigue and its contributing factors in the aeronautical field. To achieve this aim, we will first organize site visits with Discovery Air subsidiaries and 90-min focus groups with workers at high risk of fatigue-related incidents (such as technicians, engineers, pilots). Focus groups will serve to clarify the relationship between signs, perceived causes, and consequences of work-related fatigue, and the constraints related to physical and organizational/psychosocial aspects of their working environment. Information gathered through focus groups will then be integrated into an experimental field study. Representative workers' groups (30/group) will be recruited for a 2-week field study. Throughout this field study, workers will fill out a sleep-wake log and daily logs of their fatigue/alertness/mood levels, and will document physical and organizational/psychosocial work constraints. Their performance will be objectively measured, 3 times a day, with a 10-min psychomotor vigilance task. Two periods of intensive 24-h monitoring will also be planned, during a work and a rest day, to quantify the circadian and sleep-wake dependent variation of sleepiness. During these days, physiological parameters (heart rate variability, salivary cortisol, and body temperature) will be measured. These data will subsequently serve in the design of an innovative biomathematical fatigue model predicting employees' work-related fatigue. Finally, this algorithm will be further validated by testing its usability in the field longitudinally for a one-year period. This unique and "first in the world" scientific approach will give Aero Vision Technologies International (AVTi) a commercialization edge on all competitors concerned with aviation safety software. This is the first initiative to integrate such work constraints into a physiologically based model of workplace fatigue.