Alexandra Fernandes

• Ph.D
• Principal Safety Engineer - Human Factors at Equinor ASA

Overview Displays have a potential to provide a high-level, comprehensive view of complex data, systems, or processes. They are used within control room settings to facilitate a quick understanding of the overall context. There is, however, scarce documentation of the effects of the use of overview displays on human performance. We ran two studies...

Overview displays are commonly used in nuclear control rooms for improved overview and situational awareness. There is, however, a need to gain more knowledge into how such displays can be used in effective ways with operator performance in mind. The purpose of this paper is therefore to collect good practices useable as input to both new builds an...

In proceedings of 5th International Conference on Human Interaction & Emerging Technologies (IHIET), August 27-29, 2021, Fondation EFOM Boris Dolto, Paris, France.

Teleoperation offers a way to harness the collaborative benefits of machine precision and efficiency combined with human flexibility and cognitive abilities. One of the main technical challenges in teleoperation is signal latency; despite the large body of literature investigating this topic, there is relatively little exploration of why signal lat...

Teleoperation offers a way to harness the collaborative benefits of machine precision and efficiency combined with human flexibility and cognitive abilities. One of the main technical challenges in teleoperation is signal latency; despite the large body of literature investigating this topic, there is relatively little exploration of why signal lat...

There is a growing interest in small modular reactors (SMRs) for generating electricity due to reduced construction time and costs, as well as more flexible operation for which larger plants are not viable. The smaller reactor core, simpler design and use of passive safety systems are expected to enable smaller teams of operators to control several...

Within industries such as nuclear, petroleum and chemical processes, monitoring and control is done from a centralized control room. The introduction of individual digital workstations, replacing analogue panels with buttons and knobs has resulted in two challenges: i) lack of haptic feedback of actions, and ii) decreased transparency in team membe...

In the nuclear industry, while there exists a growing body of knowledge on human reliability data for actions inside the main control room, there is a lack of empirical data for field operator tasks. In this paper we present an initial study to verify a new framework for collecting reliability data for actions outside the control room. The study fo...

This paper explores the impact that large screen overview displays have on human performance in a nuclear power plant control room. We collected direct performance measures (accuracy and response time) in a full scope, digital research simulator, using a simplified task method. The participants were licensed operators who were asked to answer quest...

This report presents a re-analysis of two studies conducted within the Halden Reactor Project. Study 1 compared operator performance on analogue and digital interfaces in a training simulator. Study 2 was conducted in HAMMLAB and compared innovative and conventional digital interfaces’ features. The aim of the re-analysis is to explore the potentia...

The increasing digitalization of nuclear power plants' main control rooms questions the validity of Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) estimates for tasks that were formerly performed by acquiring information on analog panels. This paper presents a re-analysis of two experiments conducted at the Halden Reactor Project that employed the micro-task met...

In energy, the main focus of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) has been towards improved safety. Initially, avoiding human error emerged as the most relevant topic of study in the sequence of accidents in the nuclear and petroleum industries. Later on, HFE contributions have expanded beyond human error approaches and focused on optimization of hum...

The development of the micro task method was initiated in 2013, and has been applied in a set of data collections within HRP projects. The method is based on realistic everyday tasks that operators must perform in nuclear power plants’ control rooms and consists of a quick sequential presentation of objective questions on the status of specific com...

Emergency operating procedures (EOPs) are fundamental for coping with emergency and accident situations in nuclear power plants. Researchers at the Halden Reactor Project have developed a design concept including computer-based EOPs and other displays to support operators during emergency situations. The computer-based procedure system includes thr...

A current challenge within the nuclear industry is to assess the impact of computerized interfaces on human performance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether innovative design features in the HAMmlab BOiling water reactor (HAMBO) displays show any performance impacts, compared to a conventional presentation of the same information: Is...

The Human System Interface (HSI) concept in HAMMLAB has provided ideas for improving information presentation and interaction in hybrid or fully computerized control rooms. The Near-Term HSI concept entails 30’’ operator workstation displays (OWD), large screen displays (LSDs), a state-based alarm system, HAMBO electronic operating procedures (HEOP...

The Halden Reactor Project (HRP) has many years of experience in developing and evaluating principles for computer-based human-machine interfaces (HMIs). We have synthesized the lessons learned in an integrated design concept that is implemented on a boiling water reactor (BWR) simulator in the HAlden Man Machine LABoratory (HAMMLAB). The design co...

This paper compares operators’ reliability on identification tasks in digital and analogue human-system interfaces (HSIs). Error rates and response times in experimental (non-nominal) conditions are compared for different basic tasks and for different HSI conditions. The tasks are identifications involved in performing operating procedures steps an...

This study’s main goal was to analyse the impact of specific innovative design features in nuclear control room digital interfaces. A within-subject experimental approach was used, where the same participants responded to the same blocks of questions in two conditions: with innovative designs – including bar graphs, minitrends, pie-charts, etc. – a...

Nine participants in a nuclear simulator study reported the workload for six different scenarios using the original rating scale and the acceptability rating scale for the six dimensions in the NASA TLX. Overall, higher workload scores were associated with lower acceptability among the participants. The scenarios that got the highest ratings of wor...

In this paper we describe a pilot study where we explore the potential of self-rated confidence judgments in the context of control room human performance evaluation. Response time, accuracy, and confidence data were obtained in a simplified task in a simulator environment of a nuclear control room. Licensed operators were presented with blocks of...

There is a need for efficient and transparent human performance measurement methods to support interface evaluation for control room modernization projects. This paper presents experiences from the second pilot test of a micro task method developed to support this need. We benchmarked performance with analog control boards in a nuclear power plant...

We review the literature on sensory, short-term, long-term, and working memory for tactile and haptic inputs, focusing on research using interference tasks and issues arising from the use of this methodology. We then present two studies that investigated the effects of haptic, verbal, spatial, and motor interference on haptic object recognition. Ex...

Telemedicine has been common practice in the petroleum industry for decades, first being characterized by telephonic contacts between the offshore platforms and the onshore medical support, and today including videoconference and digital medical devices. In this paper we present work drawing on a systemic perspective meaning that the telemedicine s...

Performance based evaluations are commonly completed as part of the human factors verification and validation of control rooms of new builds or substantial modernizations in Nuclear Power Plants. The validation of the Main Control Room system in the nuclear industry entails the assessment of specific performance components such as plant performance...

The Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) industry relies on extensive evaluation and qualification to support safe and efficient operation. Integrated System Validation (ISV) is required for new and modernized control rooms, and represents a specific challenge in that multiple performance dimensions need to be assessed. Measures for these dimensions, such as...

As the average age of the operating Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) increases, the need for modernization projects in this industry is growing throughout the world. There is thus a need to gather information on previous experiences and to learn from them, to be able to find solutions to main challenges and also to establish repeatable good practices. W...

The present report summarizes the findings in the Project “Future of Telemedicine in O&G” regarding the capabilities and resilience work. In this report we will briefly describe these two complementary approaches and how they were applied in the analysis of the cases. The offshore healthcare services in the O&G industry rely on telemedicine facilit...

The Oskarshamn 1 has recently performed a periodic safety review. The regulator has increased its requirements regarding plants’ evaluation of the control room function for safety reviews. Oskarshamn 1 has therefore carried out an integrated system validation (ISV) of the control room. The purpose of this paper is to present examples of method, mea...

The oil & gas companies operating in the Norwegian Continental Shelf have commonly used the capabilities approach within the context of Integrated Operations. This approach focuses on understanding organisations as dynamic systems and provides concepts and a language for developing resources. Recent efforts are focusing on extending Integrated Oper...

This paper presents an ongoing work in on the future of telemedicine in O&G. There has been a huge development in the use of video consultation between remote patients and the doctors. We believe the future of telemedicine in O&G will add to this workflow by investigating how we can transfer visual medical data between "offshore nurses" and "medica...

On the Norwegian Continental Shelf, several operators have invested in technologies that are enabling and enhancing real-time collaboration between personnel onshore and offshore in order to achieve more effective decision-making. This is thought to improve operational performance, including delivery of offshore healthcare. Frequently in offshore h...

Através das tarefas apresentadas neste trabalho, procurou-se definir um conjunto de adjectivos que permitissem uma descrição consistente das propriedades tácteis de um conjunto de tecidos, durante provas de análise sensorial.Os atributos foram seleccionados recorrendo a participantes não – especialistas, uma estratégia distinta da habitual em estud...

This paper reviews the literature on tactual perception. Throughout this review, we will highlight some of the most relevant aspects in the touch literature: type of stimuli; type of participants; type of tactile exploration; and finally, the interaction between touch and other senses. Regarding type of stimuli, we will analyse studies with abstrac...

The aim of this study was to identify the tactile dimensions in the discrimination of light-weight wool fabrics. The participants judged the overall similarity between 21 light-weight wool fabrics using free sorting tasks. The fabrics were evaluated using active touch with limited exploratory procedure. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to ge...