A sensemaking perspective on situation awareness in power grid operations

Abstract

With increasing complexity and interconnectivity of the electric power grid, the scope and complexity of grid operations continues to grow. New paradigms are needed to guide research to improve operations by enhancing situation awareness of operators. Research on human factors/situation awareness is described within a taxonomy of tools and approaches that address different levels of cognitive processing. While user interface features and visualization approaches represent the predominant focus of human factors studies of situation awareness, this paper argues that a complementary level, sensemaking, deserves further consideration by designers of decision support systems for power grid operations. A sensemaking perspective on situation awareness may reveal new insights that complement ongoing human factors research, where the focus of the investigation of errors is to understand why the decision makers experienced the situation the way they did, or why what they saw made sense to them at the time.Index Terms-Computer displays; computer interface human factors; decision making; decision support systems; display human factors; human factors; man-machine systems; power systems; situation awareness; user interfaces.

SensePlace2: GeoTwitter analytics support for situational awareness

“…In the domain of power grid operations, Greitzer, et al [8] make a strong case for application of a sensemaking perspective to SA. One of their key points is that traditional information technology support for SA has focused on increasing information throughput, thus scaling human capabilities to process information.…”

Naturalistic Decision Making for Power System Operators

“…Figure 1 is a depiction of an integrated NDM model that we purport will be useful in training of power grid operational decision making. It can be seen that this is strongly influenced by insights of Weick (1995) on sensemaking concepts that have been applied to power grid operations (Greitzer, Schur, Paget, & Guttromson, 2008), and largely based on the RPD model; it incorporates the metacognitive/critique portion of the R/M model by invoking additional mental models and mental simulations in the pattern recognition process. Here the initial processing of cues and patterns may be modulated by a critiquing process (using mental models and simulations) that occurs early in the recognition-primed process of situation assessment.…”

Overview Report: Normal and Emergency Operation Visualization

“…The approach is strongly influenced by insights of Weick (1995) on sensemaking concepts that have been applied to power grid operations (Greitzer, Schur, Paget, & Guttromson, 2008;, and largely based on concepts of situation awareness (Endsley, 1995;, recognition-primed decision making (RPD) , and metacognition (Cohen et al, 1997).…”