Effective Situational Awareness (Actionable Decisions) requires “Engineers to evolve to Artists.”

Industrial situational Awareness is a key concept for the future of supervisory/ operational systems. Moving beyond ASM (abnormal situational Management standards) which have had mixed success, not due to standard, but due to implementations. Understanding this subtle difference in implementation is when we start talking “engineers evolving to an artistic, human factor aware.”

This image shows a traditional process screen with photo like images, and the right hand image shows the intensity of eye focus based upon color and drawings. The issue is the awareness of the alarms up the top or indication symbols up the top are lost, this is where the ASM brings a cleaner view, as seen in the image below where this same screen has been evolved to ASM. Yet even that design can be improved.

Last week we had the Australian User Conference combining old Invensys and Schneider Electric, many productive discussions. However, one that stood out was with a college Rik De Smet around the effective situational awareness. Rik like me has been involved in a number of operational centers most notably one in Oman across 70 existing DCS systems . Where the project applied ASM (Abnormal Situational Management concepts) but derived from human factor experts in Holland, where they looked not just the effect of grey, but went well beyond into understanding the tracking of a user’s eye. The results drove screen layout, color and application of awareness.

The conversations last week went beyond this, to the fact that now many companies have released ASM based graphic libraries, and how many engineers are applying them without the full thought. Yes, it brings improved results, by de-cluttering the experience, but there is another level of operational value. It has been proven in upstream oil and gas, transportation, mining that well applied “situational awareness” (ASM) applied at graphics, and alarms regularly provides 30 to 40 % improvement in awareness and responsiveness over traditional screens with photo generic and many colors.  

Rik has been taking this to a new level with tools to evaluate engineered screens and to see where the focus is, and to provide feedback to designer. These tools, track the eye focus and intensity of eye focus (distraction) to a spot or image. Providing valuable feedback for the designer to adjust the layout and effect. With good examples of what appeared to be an effective ASM type screen, with some managed tools taking into account “human factor.” A heat map showing that same screen with actual eye focus, and it was clear that tuning was required in order to gain that early awareness that was expected.

This image is now showing a typical ASM screen applying standards in ASM, and alarm borders around critical equipment. Many people would be satisfied with this, but when you now apply the eye intensity tool, to that same screen, you do see focus on the critical equipment in the middle. But you also see a loss in focus to the bottom, navigation buttons and even company logo, all of which are not important in awareness of the plant state.

This insight brought a new level of true “human factor” and effective “artistic” side to play in the design, to enable a step up in results to the next level of value. For me, it brought reality to a factor I suspected that the system engineers going forward from today, need extra tools, or someone in the project requires the expertise. There are online human factor tools coming available, and these services will become vital in the next few years.

We combine this “early awareness” to enable decisions, but the real requirement is to go to “actionable decisions” that empower the user to lead to a decisions, and action very rapidly that is a best operational practice. In another conversation my mind went back to Hudson River plane landing, where the pilots did not speak for 3 minutes, that took roles, made decisions, and action ed out well trained operational procedures that enabled rapid success. The two pilots had not met prior to that take off, but they were able to combine to execute. The only way we can bring this into industry through the changing of operational approach, embedding experience and process, so we do not just enable decisions, but “actionable decisions.”