Development of a situation awareness measure to evaluate advanced alarm systems in nuclear power plant control rooms

The process controller is required to remain updated regarding developments in the dynamically changing process state, this being referred to as the maintenance of situation awareness. Alarm systems play an important role within this task, and therefore a measure of how effective the system is for enhancing the operator's situation awareness is desirable. One proposed measure is the Situation Awareness Control Room Inventory (SACRI). The methods and results of four simulator studies undertaken to develop and evaluate SACRI are outlined in this paper. It is concluded that SACRI is of use alongside measures such as detection time and diagnostic accuracy in simulator-based evaluations of alarm system design.