Abstract
This thesis discusses the effects of nuclear power plant
control room digitalization and of increasing control
room automation on the operator work. The concept of
automation awareness is introduced and automation
awareness is defined as a part of situation awareness.
The development and maintenance of automation awareness
is considered to be a continuous process that comprises
of perceiving the current status of automation,
comprehending the status and its meaning to the system
behaviour as well as estimating the future statuses and
their meanings. The human operator is seen as a part of
the system, and their decisions and actions affect the
system state. The questions of what is sufficient
automation awareness and how to examine the acquired
level of automation awareness are addressed briefly.
Sufficient automation awareness is defined as the
operator's understanding of automation, their skills to
interact with it and their will to cooperate with it on
such a level that leads to safe and efficient operation
of the nuclear power plant in all situations. Factors
affecting the development and maintenance of the
operators' automation awareness in a nuclear power plant
control room are listed. The thesis presents
literature-based guidelines for successful
human-automation cooperation as well as for presenting
automation in control room user interfaces. The key
contributors to a successful automation user interface
are observability of automation, workload and failure
management. In the practical part of the thesis, these
factors were taken into account when designing and
developing a user interface for an emergency diesel power
generation system simulator. In developing the final user
interface, user evaluation was utilized in addition to
the literature-based theory. The ready-made user
interface is presented and the design solutions are gone
through especially in terms of the three mentioned
guidelines.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Qualification | Master Degree |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Place of Publication | Espoo |
| Publisher | |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 |
| MoE publication type | G2 Master's thesis, polytechnic Master's thesis |
Keywords
- automation awareness
- nuclear power plant
- control room
- human-automation cooperation
- human-system interfaces