Babji Srinivasan

Human operator performance is a key factor for proper operation of safety critical industries like process control, nuclear power plant and aviation. Several incident reports identify human error as one of the causes responsible for accidents. One way to reduce human error is to impart proper operator training which requires understanding how operators learn during training. Traditionally, learning is evaluated on the basis of subjective assessments and outcomes of the task execution. It obscures the cognitive aspect of the learning process like understanding how operator gives attention to various information sources and develops the process of decision making during the training program. In this study, we use pupil size measurement from eye tracking system to study and understand learning as participants undergo repetitive trials of simulated flight operations tasks. A derived measure based on time-frequency analysis of pupil size variation is observed to be sensitive to the process of learning during task repetition. We observe improvement in the task performance accompanied by the decrease in the proposed measure.

Safety is paramount aspect of any chemical plant. In this paper various approaches to enhance process safety are evaluated. The specific enhancements include process design methodologies for improving inherent safety and cognitive engineering to reduce human errors. Their aim is to reduce the number and the consequences of possible deviation events, which depends predominantly on quality of the equipment and human error potential. The consequences are linked to the substances and their inventories. An inherent safety index is used to assess the properties of substances and process units while the potential for human error is characterized using various physiological measures. Our research indicates that application of process synthesis methodologies for simultaneous inherent safety assessment and advanced cognitive engineering approaches for human error reduction will lead to enhanced process safety.