Human performance metrics for the nuclear domain: A tool for evaluating measures of workload, situation awareness and teamwork

Abstract

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has developed a tool to support the understanding and evaluation of workload (WL), situation awareness (SA), and teamwork (TW) metrics used in human factors engineering (HFE) programs for commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs). This article summarizes the NRC report on the tool, and discusses its potential application to other industries. The operational relevance of WL, SA and TW to the NPP domain is reviewed, and challenges associated with the development of valid metrics for these constructs are identified. The Generic Metrics Catalog (GMC) is a database that compiles information about WL, SA, and TW metrics in a readily accessible and easy to use format. It provides information about the psychometric properties of a metric and the soundness of the methods used to investigate these properties. In the evaluation of a proposed HFE in an NPP license application, the Decision Making Wizard (DMW) uses reviewer input and information found in the GMC to identify areas of concern in applications. Tools of this kind may be especially valuable in other domains for managing challenges of novel technologies such as automation, human-robot teaming and augmented cognition.