QOE Associates Lda, proposes the establishment of a global Aeronautical Human Factors  Centre of Excellence, to be located in the Aeronautical Cluster in Ponte de Sor, Portugal. This  collaborative center would provide research and development, university collaborations,  consulting services and training and certification based on current market needs and the future  European vision for the aeronautical industry.  

The work of the Center will be focused on delivering Europe’s vision for Aviation outlined in  Flightpath 2050, namely to serve society’s needs for safe, more efficient and environmentally  friendly air transport; and to maintain global leadership for Europe in this sector with a  competitive supply chain and competitive operators (ACARE 2017).  

The role of human factors in achieving Europe’s vision for Aviation is recognised by the EU and  industry stakeholders. ACARE (2017) has underlined that attention must be paid to all aspects  of human factors, theory, methods and implications of decision support systems to optimize  human and organisational factors for safety. More research is needed to develop smart  humanmachine interfaces, for highly automated systems, and new crew and team concepts  must be developed to embrace the whole air transport system. A continued focus on key  operational roles such as pilots and controllers to monitor and support the human performance  envelope detecting and compensating for problems such as fatigue, workload, vigilance and  poor decision making, loss of situation awareness, and loss of control in real time (ACARE  2017).  

To achieve the above, QOE Associates Lda, a multi-skilled team of leading industry experts and  practitioners, is uniquely positioned to provide support to integrate the human element from the  very early stages of the design of a safety critical system. Embedding human factors expertise  from the definition of the job through the design, delivery of training and assessment of human  performance, will lead safer operations, and optimize levels of resilience, productivity, and  smooth and cost effective implementation of new technologies.  

Working together with aeronautical industry stakeholders, governments and other partners,  including academic and research institutions, the Centre will seek to provide state-of-the-art  evidence and best practices in the area of aeronautical human factors within the European aeronautical industry. This will be achieved interalia through design, training, validation &  certification, human performance trainings safety surveys and investigations. One such  potential partnership could be with the ATL-100 project, developed in conjunction with CEIIA  and DESAER. It presents a unique opportunity to use diverse Human Factors support  throughout the design, development, training and certification stages using a systems approach.  Ponte de Sor, provides an ideal location for the QOE Associates Lda Global Center of  Excellence in Human Factors in Aeronautics. With its historical ties to aviation and current  favourable and collaborative environment for the scientific and industrial development of  companies, QOE Associates Lda is interested in having a base in one of Europe’s most  important aviation clusters.