The Department of Aviation at UNSW is both a place of learning and one of active research. At any one time there are a range of research projects being undertaken at all levels from undergraduate to postdoctoral. In keeping with UNSW's status as one of the leading research institutions, the Department of Aviation is building an impressive reputation in industry-oriented research.

This page will let you link to a range of information. Please visit frequently as new information will be added as soon as it comes available.

Standard operational procedures and impacts on situational awareness.
Simon Henderson
Supervisor: Prof. Jason Middleton
Standard Operational Procedures (SOP’s) have the advantage of defining precisely what should be done by a flight crew under all circumstances. In some cases though SOP’s are not well enough specified, and this can lead to confusion and loss of situational awareness. Data is being analysed concurrently from two sources, a major airline training simulator, and a medical simulator known as the Southern Area Health Service Patient Simulator to determine common and differing features, and ultimately to optimise simulator training systems.


Aerial firefighting; a legal, systematic and operational study
Peter Smith
Supervisor: Prof. Jason Middleton
This project will review the legal and operational circumstances presently utilised in aerial firefighting in Australia. ICAO, international, federal and state legislation will be reviewed to determine legal obligations and constraints. Review of operational practice will be undertaken in the light of legal requirements, and operational efficiencies to determine to what extent aerial firefighting in Australia is effective.


Speed and accuracy: A complex interplay in skill development
Helena Hong
Supervisor: Prof. Ann Williamson
Theories and models of skills development often assume that speed and accuracy are interchangeable performance indices that improve in a straightforward relationship with extended practice. This ignores the fact that practice may alter the compromises between speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) which is known to set the limits to performance. Thirty participants were trained on a simple psychomotor task. Practice significantly improved all speed mesures but did not significantly reduce error rate. Specifically, the majority of errors occured on trials with low target probability and did not decrease with increased practice. Moreover, the study found no relationship between speed and accuracy for trials with high target probability, but a clear tradeoff was found for trials with low target probability. The results highlight the complexity of the skill development process and demonstrate a situation where practice did not result in error reduction due to the complex interplay between SAT and target probability.


Utilising airbone lidar for meteorology research
Greg Miles
Supervisor: Prof. Jason Middleton
Greg's research relates to the analysis of wind velocity and aerosol
concentrations over the Sydney basin, using a combination of numerical modelling and experimental LIDAR data.
He completed his BSc (Honours, 2nd Class) at Griffith University, Qld. His research area for Honours was The Effects of Mesh Refinement on the Computational Fluid Dynamics of Blood Flow in the Human Right Coronary Artery.


The effect of monotony on performance
Naomi Dunn
Supervisor: Prof. Ann Williamson
Although monotony is widely recognised as being detrimental to performance its occurence and effects are not yet well understood. This is aggravated by confusion in the research literature with other states of low arousal such as boredom, fatigue, hypovigilance and underload. The overall aim of my research is to explore and understand the link between monotony and the development of task-related fatigue. This has implications for many industries including rail, aviation, nuclear, military and road transport, due to the nature of the tasks that many of these workers are required to do and to do so reliably and safely. The increasing use of automation in these industries also means that the role of the active worker is being changed to that of a passive monitor which may not actually relieve workload as expected and could potentially increase the monotony of a task to a point where performance starts to suffer. Possible ways to mitigate monotony will also be explored. Overall, this knowledge will contribute to an increased understanding of factors related to performance and consequently to safety, reliability and efficiency in many industries.


Fatigue and occupational health and safety in the light trucking industry
Rena Friswell
Supervisor: Prof. Ann Williamson (joint supervision with Public Health and Community Medicine).
Rena has been enrolled part time since 2004. She was working on an ARC Linkage grant project. She has conducted all of her empirical work except a small population data analysis. All of her empirical work has been written in the form of three reports to the funders. One peer-reviewed publication has been generated and four others are currently in progress. She should complete by the middle of 2009.


Development and application of an evaluation framework for injury surveillance systems
Rebecca Mitchell
Supervisor: Prof. Ann Williamson (joint supervision with Public Health and Community Medicine).


Perception of risk and patient safety
Mary Potter Forbes
Supervisor: Prof. Ann Williamson (joint supervision with Public Health and Community Medicine).


Predictive value of identified environmental socio-demographic and behavioural factors for accidental poisonings in young children
Marcia Schmertmann
Supervisor: Prof. Ann Williamson (joint supervision with Public Health and Community Medicine).


The link between attitude, risk perception and behaviour with GA Pilots
Justin Drinkwater
Supervisor: Dr Brett Molesworth
Commercial Aviation in Australia has an enviable safety record, however, the General Aviation (GA) industry’s record is less impressive. Commercial pilots in Australia will by-and-large be trained in the GA industry, it is a critical link in the training of pilots, influencing them in the formative period of their careers. It is therefore appropriate to investigate the attitudes and behaviour of pilots in this stage of their career to determine wether or not the attitudes and behaviours of pilots at this stage of their career are inappropriate or if there are any unexpected attitudes prevalent.
Additionally, the correlation between attitudes, risk perception, risk tolerance and behaviour in pilots is poorly represented in the literature. Therefore this research will investigate the attitude towards risk, the perception and tolerance of risk and the risk behaviours of Australian commercial pilot candidates.


Automation in ATC
Marek Bekier
Supervisor: Dr Brett Molesworth
Resistance to ATM automation: defining the threshold where operator support turns into resistance. An increased use of automation within the ATM environment is seen to be one possible enabler for a signifcant capacity increase of the ATM system. However, often automated tools and systems are rejected by the Air Traffic Controllers unwillingness to cooperate with it.
This research aims at understanding and defining the threshold along the automation dimensions "decision selection" and "action implementation", where the the support of the operators tips into skepticism and refusal to colaborate with it.


Air cargo integrator's shipping choice modelling
Jungkyu Choi
Supervisor: Dr Chen-Lung (Richard) Wu
Cargo is becoming a more important area of business for airlines. However, there is not much research about competition and productivity in cargo markets. Therefore, this research is to define factors which influence a customer’s decision to choose an airline in cargo markets and to analyze the importance and relationship between each of the factors. In addition, it aims to analyze the competition between airlines by using certain key variables affecting competitiveness. Also this research will analyze the productivity in major airlines in cargo markets by several factors.
Finally this research aims to show the strengths and weaknesses of each airline and make recommendations for improvements in productivity and performance of airlines in cargo markets.


The relationship between airlines and airports
Cornelia Steudel
Supervisor: Dr Cheng-Lung (Richard) Wu
Cornelia’s research relates to the internal policy of the airline-airport supply relationship in tourism and non-tourism regions.


The impact of aviation on tourist dispersal in Australia
Theo TR Koo
Supervisor: Dr Cheng-Lung (Richard) Wu
Australia has the highest Low Cost Carriers (LCC) penetration rate in the world. Their characteristics of seeking excess capacity airports and point-to-point network are often viewed as opportunities for regional tourism destinations to gain access to key source markets. In this research, we raise a number of questions arising from the expansion of LCC network in Australia, and discuss its implication for regional tourism destinations. The presence of regional-dispersion-threatening tourism trends and the emphasis on the greater regional dispersion objective as outlined in the Tourism White Paper, warrant investigation into the role that LCC will play for the benefit of regional tourism destinations. Eventually, this study wishes to contribute to the debate on how well LCC emergence is in line with promoting regional tourism and discuss arising challenges for the research community as well as the government and industry stakeholders. Two broad research questions are of particular relevance to this thesis: where does the demand for LCC come from? And, what are the traffic (tourists) characteristics of this demand?

Defect reporting cultures in Australian aviation
Peter Harding
Supervisor: Dr Brett Molesworth
Anecdotal evidence suggests that commercial airline pilots are delaying reporting aircraft defects to accommodate for commercial pressures. Such a practice has both safety and legislative implications. Moreover, under the Australian Civil Aviation Regulations 1988 - Reg 248, pilots are required to report all aircraft defects arising during each phase of flight.
As a result, the proposed research intends to investigate the prevalence of delaying aircraft defect reporting and investigate the underlying mechanisms that support such a practice. This will be achieved by examining trends in data relating to the reporting of aircraft defects and examing the culture, practices and management hierarchy and styles that maintain the behaviour.


Regulatory oversight and its effect on compliance
David Parker
Supervisor: Dr Brett Molesworth
This research will attempt to assess the effectiveness of the CASA regulatory oversight program. This would be accomplished by analysing data collected from previous CASA audits (back to 2001), in particluar findings resulting in Requests for Corrective Actions (RCA's). These findings, from all disciplines of aviation would becompared with the safety concerns of the aviation community. The research would be used to gauge the areas of concern to the industry.
Further comparisons would be made with the growth of aviation in Australia, the changing face of aviation and the shift towards systems based auditing by CASA.


Knowledge or culture - decision making tensions for airline executives?
Pruet Boobphakam
Supervisor: Mr. Ian Douglas


Unconstrained demand modelling with neural network and choice modelling
Tomasz Drabas
Supervisor: Dr Cheng-Lung (Richard) Wu
Research area: 'Neural Network applications in Revenue Management: Forecasting the demand'.
Airlines face demand patterns that are highly stochastic. What is more, they also experience perishable inventory - unsold seats at the time of flight departure have no longer any value for an airline. That is why airlines implement complex Revenue Management systems in order to maximise their total revenue. Among other factors, demand forecast accuracy tends to be the crucial element of the Revenue Management system and, thus, foreseeing the demand with least possible error is an issue of highest importance for airlines.
Since this is stochastic problem with many probabilistic variables Neural Networks are highly probable to improve the accuracy of predictions. This project aims at researching various Neural Network models for Revenue Management forecasting module in order to improve accuracy of demand prognoses.


Integrating airline alliances with airport termnal resource allocation
Andy Lee
Supervisor: Dr Cheng-Lung (Richard) Wu

The effect of ATC on pilot perfomance
Tom Mc Carthy
Supervisor: Dr Brett Molesworth

The Department of Aviation is proud to offer an Honours Degree Program in Aviation for those with suitable Bachelors degrees. The degrees of Master of Science by Research and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD.) are offered for exceptional students at the postgraduate level in areas relating to aviation.

If you wish to have more information about the research programs at UNSW Aviation, please contact:

Prof. Jason Middleton - Head of Department
Department of Aviation
University of New South Wales
Sydney. NSW 2052. Australia

Tel. +612 9385 6767 (internationally) or 02 9385 6767 (within Australia)
Fax. +612 9385 6637 (internationally) or 02 9385 6637 (within Australia)
E-mail. j.middleton@unsw.edu.au