Shiny as a novel assessment tool for pilots in training

ShinyConf 2024

Randall Boyes and Umair Durrani

Presage Group

Canadian scientific consulting firm specializing in human behavior in the airline industry

Learn more: https://presagegroup.com/

Analytics Team

Randall Boyes (Director of Analytics)


Amy Ecclestone (Junior Data Analyst)


Brooke Linden (Director of Research)

Umair Durrani (Junior Data Scientist)

Challenges in Flight Safety

Accidents directly caused by pilot errors account for about 70% of the total accidents

Sources: Unstable approach; Statistics

Project Overview

A novel assessment tool to optimize learning opportunities and performance outcomes for trainee pilots.

  • Improve flight safety for millions of air travelers every year

Required Features

  • Online, fast and reliable
  • Take data from student pilots
  • Personal dashboard for students
  • Separate student and instructor user interfaces
  • Accessible on desktop, iPad and cellphone

Development Questions

  • What framework to use? shiny, shinyMobile, golem, rhino
  • How to store and retrieve data? Relational, NoSQL
  • How to aggregate data on schedule?
  • Authentication shinymanager, shinyuser, firebase, polished, etc.
  • Aesthetics

Development Questions

  • What framework to use? shiny with {golem}
  • How to store and retrieve data? Firestore with in-house {frstore} made with {httr2}
  • How to aggregate data on schedule? GitHub Actions
  • Authentication Firebase with {frbs}
  • Aesthetics {bslib} - responsive design

Quick Demo

Let’s build an example app

Firebase Project

Firebase Project

Firebase Project

In your .Renviron file:

FIREBASE_PROJECT_ID="<Firebase projectId>"

Authentication

{firebase} is great but with limited UI customization

Authentication

Requirement: Register and sign in with ID instead of email

  • Not possible with {firebase}

Authentication

Meet a new package {frbs} by Kennedy Mwavu


Useful functions:

  • frbs_sign_up(email, password)
  • frbs_sign_in(email, password)

Authentication

Customize UI as you like. For example, {frbs-examples} also by Kennedy Mwavu:

Authentication

With bslib::bs_theme:

Authentication

  • Check if the ID matches with student/instructor email
  • Launch the corresponding UI

Authentication

Student UI

Instructor UI

Database Operations

Cloud Firestore is a scalable NoSQL database

  • No official client library for R 😔

Database Operations

We developed our own

  • Create, read, update, and delete operations via REST API
  • {httr2}
  • frstore_create_document
  • frstore_patch
  • frstore_get

Database Read example

Database Write example

Based on this Gist

Database Read example

Aggregating data on schedule

Requirement: Compare a pilot with average pilot

Example: Average skill by homeworld and starships:

Aggregating data on schedule

GitHub actions

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
   - cron:  "00 00 * * *"

name: calculate average

jobs:
  run-r-script:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      FIREBASE_PROJECT_ID: ${{ secrets.FIREBASE_PROJECT_ID }}
      FIREBASE_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.FIREBASE_API_KEY }}
      PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.PASSWORD }}
      GH_PAT: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }} # Add the GitHub PAT secret
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r@v2
        with:
          use-public-rspm: true
      - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r-dependencies@v2
        with:
          cache-version: 2
          packages:
            any::remotes

      - name: Install R packages
        run: |
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("dplyr", version = "1.1.4")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("jsonlite", version = "1.8.7")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("httr2", version = "1.0.0")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("tidyr", version = "1.3.1")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("stringr", version = "1.5.1")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("lubridate", version = "1.9.3")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("purrr", version = "1.0.2")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_version("tibble", version = "3.2.1")'
          Rscript -e 'remotes::install_github("kennedymwavu/frbs", auth_token = Sys.getenv("GH_PAT"))'

      - name: run-script
        run: Rscript process_data_to_create_averages.R

Aesthetics

{bslib} makes UI customization easy

In Conclusion:

✅ Online, fast and reliable
✅ Take data from student pilots
✅ Personal dashboard for students
✅ Separate student and instructor user interfaces
✅ Accessible on desktop, iPad and cellphone

Resources