Stress and operator decision making in coping with emergencies

✍ Scribed by Tom Kontogiannis

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 364 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1071-5819
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1996.0043

✦ Synopsis

Although considerable ef fort has been put into the design of hardware-oriented strategies for mitigating high risk emergencies , the role of decision aids and training strategies to support human performance under stress has not been explored systematically . This has important implications for the management of emergencies since inadequacies in decision-making skills may jeopardise the success of any hardware-oriented mitigations . This paper proposes a quasi-analytical framework of decision making under stress to integrate findings of the stress literature and identify cognitive activities and skills involved in decision making . Practical implications of the proposed framework include ; designing simulations of system emergencies , monitoring and analysing operator performance under stress , and providing guidelines for making training hypotheses about instructional strategies which could potentially lead to improved performance . A case study from the nuclear industry is also presented to illustrate the theoretical framework and the proposed tools .