Highlights The role of the situation awareness factor in the tragedy of Institute, West Virginia is investigated. Bayesian networks are utilized to model the control room operator’s mental models. Fuzzy logic systems are used to resemble the control room operator’s thinking when assessing abnormal situations. The approach is able to determine when a situation is abnormal and, when necessary, to show the investigation priority.
Abstract In 2008 a runaway chemical reaction caused an explosion at a methomyl unit in West Virginia, USA, killing two employees, injuring eight people, evacuating more than 40,000 residents adjacent to the facility, disrupting traffic on a nearby highway and causing significant business loss and interruption. Although the accident was formally investigated, the role of the situation awareness (SA) factor, i.e., a correct understanding of the situation, and appropriate models to maintain SA, remain unexplained. This paper extracts details of abnormal situations within the methomyl unit and models them into a situational network using dynamic Bayesian networks. A fuzzy logic system is used to resemble the operator’s thinking when confronted with these abnormal situations. The combined situational network and fuzzy logic system make it possible for the operator to assess such situations dynamically to achieve accurate SA. The findings show that the proposed structure provides a useful graphical model that facilitates the inclusion of prior background knowledge and the updating of this knowledge when new information is available from monitoring systems.
The explosion at institute: Modeling and analyzing the situation awareness factor
Accident Analysis and Prevention ; 73 ; 209-224
2014-09-08
16 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
The explosion at institute: Modeling and analyzing the situation awareness factor
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|Integrated Situation Awareness
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