A Review on Measurement and Applications of Situation Awareness for an Evaluation of Korea Next Generation Reactor Operator Performance

상황인식에 대한 측정 및 차세대 원자로 운전원 성능 평가에서의 활용방법에 관한 이론 연구

Situation awareness is defined as a person's perception of the elements of the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future. Situation awareness is important in attempting to evaluate human behavior in operating complex systems such as aircraft, air traffic control, and nuclear power plant systems. From the literatures this study reviews the relationship between situation awareness and numerous individual, system and environmental factors, and also reviews the methodologies for the empirical measurement of situation awareness applicable to Korea Next Generation Reactor (KNGR) design project. Attention, working memory, workload, stress, system complexity, and automation are presented as critical factors limiting operator's situation awareness. Mental models and goal-directed behavior are hypothesized as important mechanisms overcoming these limits. This study summarized hypothesized guidelines for interface design to improve situation awareness of reactor operators. Some of the guidelines should be tested in the KNGR evaluation experiments in the future.