ABSTRACT
Monitoring is a very widespread human activity and requires the maintenance of appropriate vigilance levels. Vigilance is often critical to the individual, customers, the organisation and in some situations, mankind. In examining the monitoring role, only certain types of monitoring are considered, although there are implications for helping the alertness of all those in any monitoring role. The type of monitoring that is principally under consideration is that where the chance of an untoward event is low, where the untoward event may be new to the monitor's experience and where the consequences from an untoward event can be devastating. This includes the modern long range airliner cockpit, power stations (conventional and nuclear), aerospace applications, industrial monitoring of critical chemical and biological processes, many forms of transport, health care and financial market monitoring. Other critical monitoring areas occur in military and security systems. Monitoring might be seen as an outmoded activity, because it is a form of inspection of control systems which, if properly constructed, would be failure tolerant if not failure free. The capability of modern control systems does not allow such an optimistic view.
