Quantifying the effectiveness of an alarm management system through human factors studies

A guide for assessing control room operator performance using speed and accuracy, perceived workload, situation awareness, and eye tracking

“…Furthermore, the majority of the published research focuses on the nuclear industry, though many characteristics of nuclear energy control rooms can apply to the petrochemical industry. For instance, the three papers evaluating display design in the petrochemical industry (Adhitya et al, 2014;Jamieson, 2007;Laberge et al, 2014) all evaluated speed and accuracy but did not include performance-shaping measures that could explain those outcomes. In the nuclear industry domain, a few researchers have combined speed and accuracy measurement with workload ratings and SA measurement (e.g., Huang et al, 2007;Yang et al, 2012).…”

“…Speed is the time taken by an operator to complete an activity, and accuracy is a measure of either correct steps or errors. Measures of speed and accuracy have been used in evaluations of alarm display designs in the chemical and petrochemical industries as performance indicators (Adhitya et al, 2014;Jamieson, 2007;Laberge et al, 2014). …”

Towards predicting human error: Eye gaze analysis for identification of cognitive steps performed by control room operators

“…Therefore novice operators could be trained for these behaviors. Finally, decision support systems for process monitoring and alarm management have received a lot of attention in literature over several decades; however, their deployment in actual plants is far short of their potential (Adhitya et al, 2014). Eye tracking studies can be used to assess how operators use decision support systems and identify issues in the operator work procedures or cognitive behaviors that diminish their utility in real-life control room situations.…”

“…In a typical control room, the cognitive tasks performed by an operator during an abnormal situation can be categorized into orientation, diagnosis and execution steps (Adhitya et al, 2014). For instance, when an abnormality occurs, the operator's attention is directed towards real-time data and information gathering from the process, its control system, alarm system, and/or support systems.…”

Information Support and Skill Evaluation of Human-Operators

“…Numerous papers are devoted to investigation of various issues of design and performance of human-machine systems with regard for the human factor (Adhitya et al, 2014, Anuar and Kim, 2014, Carvalho et al, 2008, Chang et al, 2014, Celik and Ertugrul, 2010, Damveld et al, 2010, dos Santos et al, 2013, Ertugrul, 2008, Ho Bin Yim et al, 2013, Hsieh Min-Han, 2012, Naderpour et al, 2014, 2015, O'Connor et al, 2008, Sutton, 1990, Tsvetkova, 1999, Yinhua Jin et al, 2004, including those of focused on the evaluation/identification human-operator skills and experience. Human-operator decision making under abnormal situations is the most main and the most difficult tasks of their professional activity, with the tasks are considerably complicated by incomplete or false information, stress, or lack of time, as well as aggravation by the huge cost of the humanoperator errors.…”