Conceptualizing Multiagency Emergency Management System as Joint Cognitive System

PresentationEmergency management system (EMS) provides a crucial barrier for the protection of socio-ecological infrastructure from man-made disasters and natural threats. To meet diverse demands from hazardous events, resilience engineering is considered as an effective approach to enhance the performance of EMS. While conceptual and qualitative descriptions of resilience are abundant, ideas of operationalizing resilience are scarce. In this regard, the present work redefines resilience in the EMS and proposes a framework of measuring resilience by abstracting the EMS as a joint cognitive system

Symbol Designs And Signal Words: Importance In Hazard Statements For Procedures

PresentationSignal words and symbols are often used in hazard statements for procedures to convey safety information to workers. However, little is known about effective display methods for this domain. Two studies were performed, one with a focus on symbol design and another on signal words. For the symbol design, contents of the design (i.e., hazard, consequence, and mitigation) were manipulated to determine any effect on participants’ performance of the mitigation methods. For signal words, workers were asked their interpretation of caution, warning, and notes, which were then coded to determine three main themes of the results. Results indicate that the content of the symbol design had no impact on participants’ performance of the mitigation step and few workers had the correct definitions for the signal words caution and warning. These results suggest the time spent by procedure writer’s determining which signal word is appropriate and what information to provide in hazard symbols is not being spent well and should be used differently

Evaluation of Psychoacoustic Sound Parameters for Sonification

Sonification designers have little theory or experimental evidence to guide the design of data-to-sound mappings. Many mappings use acoustic representations of data values which do not correspond with the listener's perception of how that data value should sound during sonification. This research evaluates data-to-sound mappings that are based on psychoacoustic sensations, in an attempt to move towards using data-to-sound mappings that are aligned with the listener's perception of the data value's auditory connotations. Multiple psychoacoustic parameters were evaluated over two experiments, which were designed in the context of a domain-specific problem - detecting the level of focus of an astronomical image through auditory display. Recommendations for designing sonification systems with psychoacoustic sound parameters are presented based on our results

Analyzing Procedure Performance using Abstraction Hierarchy: Implications of Designing Procedures for High-risk Process Operations

PresentationStandard operating procedures (SOPs) are a vital element of everyday operations in chemical process industries. Incident investigations also indicate that a majority of adverse events in the processing operations are ascribed to issues associated with SOPs. Although there have been continuous efforts to improve informational and perceptual aspects of SOPs, assessing them from a systems perspective remains a persistent gap. As one novel way to address such gap, this study employs an ecological approach to understand the functional structure of the work domain, that is, abstraction hierarchy (AH) and its relations to SOPs and operator performance. First, this study models a 3-phase separation system, a common gas-oil-water separation process, using an abstraction-decomposition space as a work domain of the system. Second, we assess the AH level, one dimension of the abstraction-decomposition space, of the SOPs developed for three tasks in the 3-phase separation system. In order to consider operators’ knowledge about the tasks, experience-task familiarity (E-TF) level is also assessed as a combinatory factor. To this end, a two-way analysis of variance is conducted to find out the effect of E-TF level (high vs. low) and AH level of the SOPs (physical vs. functional) on the operator’s performance. Results show significant main effects of the E-TF level and AH level on the successful performance of the SOPs. The interaction effect of the two variables is considered marginally significant. Based on the results, several implications for the design of SOPs in relation to the AH of the chemical processing domain are discussed

Procedural Performance: Possible Costs of Time Pressure, Shift Change, and Task Complexity

PresentationProcedural tasks, which typically involve performing a sequence of steps in a regular and consistent manner, are an inherent part of almost all high-risk industrial settings. Further, it is not uncommon for a need to arrive when these tasks need to be performed at an accelerated rate to meet a deadline or accommodate a mechanical state in the facility. Additionally, because these industries operate on 24-hour cycles, the workers performing these procedural tasks work shift work—often working 12-hour shifts and varying between day and night shifts. Extensive research has shown that changing between day and night (or vice versa) work shifts causes fatigue and can result in decrease performance. Finally, given the nature of these complex socio-technical systems, some of the procedural tasks are more complex than others. These three variables—time pressure, shift change, and task complexity—could of course individually have impacts on workers’ performance with procedures as well as have combined impacts on performance. However, there is little objective research investigating workers’ performance on procedural tasks in this domain. It is conceivable that workers maybe able to sustain task performance for a period of time with a combination of these three variables with increased effort and focus. However, this task performance likely comes at a cost. For instance, Metha and her colleagues found that when stressed, participants were able to maintain a certain performance but it required a higher physiological load, which, if sustained can lead to fatigue. This presentation will share the results of participants who completed 24 different procedural tasks (procedures) representing the 3 variables mentioned above. They completed 12 during a day shift and 12 during a night shift. For each of the 12 day/night shift, half required the participant to complete the procedure under time pressure and the other half were self-paced, and the procedures varied in their levels of complexity. Participants’ performance on the procedures at a step level (2-perfect, 1-some problems, 0-fail) were scored and their physiological responses (Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability) were recorded

Relationship between operator situation awareness and physiological states during complex and critical offshore well control scenarios

PresentationIncident reviews of oil spill events (both large and small) suggest that human error, or more appropriately “systems error”, is a contributor to 50% of well control incidents (primarily kicks). The purpose of this study was to examine operator situation awareness (SA) and associated physiological load, using heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), during simulated offshore well control scenarios that differed in their complexity and criticality levels. Ten trained participants completed four scenarios (simple non-failure, simple failure, complex non-failure, and complex-failure) in an experimental session, lasting ~6 hours. Measures were obtained for each scenario, including speed and accuracy of the task performance, composite scores obtained from the Situational Awareness Rating Technique (SART), and operator heart rate and HRV measures. Greater errors were found in kick-related failure events, and complex scenarios were associated with longer reaction times. Participants perceived lower SA levels during complex scenarios, and a trend was observed for lowest SA during complex failure scenarios. Finally, physiological responses did not differ for any of the four scenarios, however, a trend of increasing physiological ‘load” was observed with more complex and critical scenarios. High variability in participant covert and overt responses may increase the challenges associated with classifying high-risk well control scenarios. It is critical that scenario planners understand and recognize the variability in driller situation awareness and associated physiological load such scenario planners can then begin to start planning for alternative future scenarios

Sonification of statistical graphs

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Boston, MA, July 7-9, 2003.Two experiments are presented that compare the effectiveness of different parameters of sound for the auditory presentation of box plots. Temporal mapping was found to be better than pitch or panning mapping. In the first experiment, the mapping condition that used two dimensions (the redundant condition) did not result in a better performance than those mappings that used one dimension. However, subjects showed a strong preference for the redundant condition. Finally, subjects' overall level was not very high and performance did not increase with practice as much as might have been expected

Team Cognition for Coordinated Decision-Making during Hurricane Harvey: A Case Study from Interviews with Responding Commanders

PresentationTo protect and assist threatened populations and infrastructures in response to natural and man- made disasters, emergency responders from diverse backgrounds collectively work as ad hoc teams. However, responders’ coordinated decision-making in real-time has not been adequately addressed in terms of team cognition. Here team cognition is a binding mechanism that produces coordinated behaviors among responders (adapted from Fiore & Salas, 2004). We are particularly interested in cognition of an incident management team (IMT), an ad hoc strategic decision-making team of command-level responders co-located at the incident command post of major incidents such as Hurricane Harvey. To develop and provide an incident action plan to subordinate branch directors in the field, an IMT continuously manages information based on incoming cues from outside, following a cyclical planning process. Interestingly, an IMT is a team of functional sub-teams, and each sub-team is also a team of functional units. The purpose of this on-going case study is to investigate the role of team cognition for coordinated real-time decision-making in emergency response, through a case study of a recent disaster, Hurricane Harvey. During the interviews with subject matter experts (SMEs, i.e., responding commanders worked during Hurricane Harvey), we asked how responding commanders as a cognitive system-of-systems (or a team-of-teams) continuously made coordinated decisions, especially in terms of communication and information management. In a prior work, a P∙D∙A (Perceive∙Diagnose∙Adapt) model, a theoretical interactionist model of team cognition in emergency response, was proposed as a proof-of-concept that depicts nonlinear, interdependent, and dynamic interactions observed within and among three functional sub-teams of a planning team of an IMT at a simulated incident command post (Moon, Son, Sasangohar, Peres, & Neville, 2018). Through interviews with SMEs, this case study is expected to validate the P∙D∙A model

The effects of various parameter combinations in parameter-mapping sonifications

Presented at the 21st International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2015), July 6-10, 2015, Graz, Styria, Austria.This study will be investigating the design of parametermapping sonifications and investigating how different combinations of sound parameter mappings affect the user’s ability to understand and interpret sEMG data. The parameter mappings being used are all redundantly mapped and the specific parameter combinations are 1) pitch and loudness, 2) pitch, loudness, and attack time, and 3) loudness and attack time. There will be both spatialized (right and left) and nonspatialized versions of each of these mappings. These mappings will be used to present sonifications of two channels of sEMG data to participants to explore if they can identify muscle activation order (which muscle activates first) and relative muscle exertion levels (which muscle has a higher exertion). It is expected that participants will perform better with the spatialized mappings. It is also expected that the participants will perform better with the mappings that include attack time because this results in greater timbral variety