Information foraging in nuclear power plant control rooms

Information foraging theory articulates the role of the human as an "informavore" that seeks information and follows optimal foraging strategies (i.e., the "information scent") to find meaningful information. This paper briefly reviews the findings from information foraging theory outside the nuclear domain and then discusses the types of information foraging strategies operators employ for normal and off-normal operations in the control room. For example, operators may employ a predatory "wolf" strategy of hunting for information in the face of a plant upset. However, during routine operations, the operators may employ a trapping "spider" strategy of waiting for relevant indicators to appear. This delineation corresponds to information pull and push strategies, respectively. No studies have been conducted to determine explicitly the characteristics of a control room interface that is optimized for both push and pull information foraging strategies, nor has there been empirical work to validate operator performance when transitioning between push and pull strategies. This paper explores examples of control room operators as wolves vs. spiders and concludes by proposing a set of research questions to investigate information foraging in control room settings.