Experimental Investigation into the Effects of Decision Support Systems on Operator Performance

Abstract

As human error is recognized as one of the main causes of nuclear power plant (NPP) accidents, there have been efforts to reduce and prevent human error by developing various decision support systems. Before adapting these support systems to actual NPPs, it is necessary to validate their reliability and to evaluate their effect on operator performance. Particularly for safety-critical systems such as NPPs, the validation and evaluation of decision support systems is as important as the design of good systems. Such evaluations may be carried out through a theoretical modeling or experimentation. The objective of this study is to experimentally investigate the effects of decision support systems on operator performance. Several trends were observed in the results of the experiments in this study; the support systems reduced both human error and workload, and the impact of the systems was most readily observed during complex and highly workloaded Situations in which an operator must handle a high volume of information.