Situation awareness and operator performance: Results from simulator-based studies

Maintaining an awareness of the process is the most important part of the operator's role, and is the basis for many important control room decisions and actions. Maintaining an awareness of the plant may be accomplished through a variety of means, including information gathering and processing, interaction with control systems, information exchange between crew members, etc. Maintaining situation awareness may become more difficult if the operator becomes removed from the process control loop through automation of operator activities. Metrics for the measurement of situation awareness are needed to provide designers, owners, and regulators with an understanding of the factors affecting operator awareness in the control room. Such an understanding can serve as an input to the development of improved training and support systems for nuclear power operations. This report documents the findings of empirical studies carried out in simulators intended to study situation awareness and other performance measures in realistic performance environments.