Reality anchor methodology: how to design a digital twin to support situation awareness

Abstract

This work focuses on the opportunity to use the Digital Twin of a complex system, as a Decision Support System. In studying the phenomenon of human Decision Making, the concept of Situation Awareness appears to be of primary importance when dealing with these complex systems. Given the complexity of the system to be represented in the DT, its own complexity, and the need to integrate the user's abilities to allow the acquisition of SA, the concept of reality anchor is proposed to identify the elements of the studied situation necessary for users to perceive, understand and project the situation they face. A methodology, called the Reality Anchor Methodology, has been defined to ensure the elicitation and implementation of these elements in a DT. This methodology is composed of three steps that aim (1) to elicit the reality anchors through a study of the operators’ tasks and activities, (2) to design a prototype to carry out human-in-the-loop tests and (3) to validate the definition of Reality Anchors by analysing the SA, experience feedback and the activities performed during the tests. This method was applied to a case study in the oil-and-gas industry and showed the importance of the defined reality anchors.