Verbal Communication Protocols in Safety-Critical System Operations

A “system” is best defined as a collection of objects that exhibit joint behavior. An object which exhibits behavior is often known as an agent; so a system is a collection of agents. Engineering systems are designed by humans to fulfil a particular purpose, to achieve a set of goals, thus they may be deemed “teleological”. Besides those other agents in the system with which an agent might interact, system agents interact with – that is, exhibit joint behavior with objects not in the system. These jointly-interacting but non-system agents constitute the “environment” of the system.