User-Initiated Notification: A Concept for Aiding the Monitoring Activities of Process Control Operators

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Abstract
Monitoring activities in a process control environment are quite unique depending on the current situation and the operator's current understanding of that situation. Furthermore, the operator may be required to monitor multiple simultaneous events over potentially long periods of time. Currently, operators must periodically scan displays to gather such information, or manipulate the alarm or control system in ways not originally intended in order to gather that information as appropriate. Furthermore, if the monitoring activities span multiple operating shifts, then there is the potential for operators to forget to communicate these requirements at shift change. Despite the uniqueness of the situations that will require process events to be monitored, it is hypothesized that there is a limited set of conditions that can be pre-defined in a tool that will allow operators to set up their own monitoring “agents” according to their current diagnostic needs. Such a tool is predicted to decrease the working memory load of operators, and reduce the time it takes them to detect important process changes (or lack of them). Furthermore, it is proposed that this concept is extensible to other plant personnel and to other domains that have similar monitoring requirements. Although some potential pitfalls can be predicted with the introduction of this tool, the number of predicted benefits warrant the further exploration of this concept. This will be the next step in our design process.

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