Evaluating ecologically-inspired displays for complex systems: Hydropower system case study

Ms Xi Li (2008-02). Evaluating ecologically-inspired displays for complex systems: Hydropower system case study PhD Thesis, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland.

Document type: Thesis
Collection: UQ Theses Collection (MPhil and PhD)
 
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Author(s) Ms Xi Li
Thesis Title Evaluating ecologically-inspired displays for complex systems: Hydropower system case study
School, Centre or Institute School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Institution The University of Queensland
Publication date 2008-02
Thesis type PhD Thesis
Supervisor(s) Prof. Penelope Sanderson
Associate Prof. Zhao Yang Dong
Total pages 299
Total colour pages 65
Total black and white pages 234
Subjects 290000 Engineering and Technology
Abstract/Summary The purpose of this thesis is to explore the theoretical and practical issues associated with the design, execution and analysis of an empirical evaluation of novel process control displays in a collaborative control room environment. An important feature of the thesis is how practical constraints associated with limited access to industry controllers were handled and how convergent lines of evidence were used to achieve the evaluation. As a novel research domain, hydropower systems (HPS) present many design challenges, because controllers must coordinate multiple domains across different time frames. If controllers are to maintain effective situation awareness and if they are to exercise effective control, the displays must integrate controllers’ problem solving across water, generation, market, and transmission concerns and across time frames. However, these needs are ignored in the current displays in a hydropower control room. The two new ecologically-inspired displays, called “Functional Displays”, evaluated in this thesis, are intended to overcome the above shortcomings. The evaluation was done with industry hydropower controllers and coordinators on a medium fidelity simulator which represented the working environment of a large hydropower control room. The core issue of this thesis is how the evaluation was conceptualized, operationalized and analysed given practical constraints arising from limited access to industry controllers, limited capacity of the simulator, and the complexity of the hydropower domain. Of key concern was the design of test scenarios, selection of measures of performance, and data analysis in the face of these constraints. The rationale of the scenario design was to combine representative contingencies within and outside the hydropower scheme, emergent storage problems and different market contexts so that controllers or coordinators would be required to act in different domains. Only by placing controllers in such challenging and time pressured situations could we maximize our chances of seeing the expected benefits of the new display, given the limited length of the experiment. Multiple measures were proposed to capture the quality of in-the-loop coupling between human controllers and the system under various disturbances. The measures of performance include: (1) control quality, which investigates how the new displays tame “temporal complexity” by helping the control team construct a more effective pattern of activities to handle contingencies; and (2) control strategy, which exposes how the new display support the coordination between storage, generation and market to meet the strategic or tangible objectives. The measures of cognition and affect include: (1) situation awareness (SA), which represents controllers’ or coordinators’ degree of cognitive coupling with different time frames and different levels of the hydropower scheme and (2) controllers’ or coordinators’ trust in the supporting displays, and their self-confidence in their own ability to control the hydropower scheme. Through the effort of triangulating the different measures, balancing the elements in designing scenarios, and extracting and integrating raw data from the study, convergent lines of evidence were achieved for evaluation. It was found that the new Functional Displays led the participant teams to a better pattern of work which was reflected in their situation awareness, their discretionary control activity, and the outcome of their control with respect to system productivity and stability. However, limitations of these findings because of the constraints of the experiment are discussed. This research contributes to many theoretical and practical issues in Human-System Interface (HSI). For example, it outlines how some of the principles of ecological interface design (EID) can be used and it highlights the value of using time as a basis for distinguishing interfaces. Moreover, this research provides fruitful insights into the selection and development of measures to assess human control in real world complex work environments. Because a key issue of this thesis is how practical constraints were handled; pragmatic approaches for measuring SA and control were developed. Because industry often performs evaluations under similar intensive constraints, the approaches and solutions developed in this thesis for evaluating novel interfaces could be easily adapted to various industrial settings.
Keyword(s) Evaluation
Ecological Interface Design
Hydropower
supervisory control
situation awareness
human performance
human control
Additional Notes Printed in colour: 7,10,12,20,32-35,37-42,54,73-75,77,97-101,111,120-121,130,139,145-146,150,152,156-159,163,167-170,175-177,182-184,190-193,198-201,213,251-255,258-259,269 37 pages are required to be printed in landscape.
 
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