Introducing the Crew Cognitive Resilience Index (CCRI™)

This doctoral research explores how cognitive resilience can be more clearly understood, studied, and supported within modern commercial aviation. As flight operations become increasingly automated, pilots are required to manage uncertainty, degraded modes, and complex system behaviour rather than simply follow procedures. Understanding how cognitive resilience operates in these conditions has become a pressing challenge for safety, training, and system design.

The Crew Cognitive Resilience Index (CCRI™) is being developed as a research framework to support structured examination of how pilots adapt, maintain situational awareness, and make decisions under high workload and ambiguity. The work adopts a systems perspective, recognising that cognitive performance is shaped not only by individual capability, but by the interaction between people, technology, procedures, and organisational context.

The intended impact of this research is to contribute to clearer conceptual thinking around cognitive resilience in aviation and to inform future discussions on training design, safety assurance, and human-centred automation. Rather than offering a single metric or assessment tool, the CCRI™ aims to support evidence-informed dialogue about how human capability can be better understood and supported as aviation systems continue to evolve.

This research is ongoing. Insights, interpretations, and applications will continue to develop as empirical work progresses and findings are formally reviewed.