A Sensemaking Perspective on Situation Awareness in Power Grid Operations

Conference · Mon Jul 21 04:00:00 EDT 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/PES.2008.4596285· OSTI ID:939594

Greitzer, Frank L; Schur, Anne; Paget, Mia L; Guttromson, Ross T

With increasing complexity and interconnectivity of the electric power grid, the scope and complexity of grid operations continues to grow. New paradigms are needed to guide research to improve operations by enhancing situation awareness of operators. Research on human factors/situation awareness is described within a taxonomy of tools and approaches that address different levels of cognitive processing. While user interface features and visualization approaches represent the predominant focus of human factors studies of situation awareness, this paper argues that a complementary level, sensemaking, deserves further consideration by designers of decision support systems for power grid operations. A sensemaking perspective on situation aware-ness may reveal new insights that complement ongoing human factors research, where the focus of the investigation of errors is to understand why the decision makers experienced the situation the way they did, or why what they saw made sense to them at the time.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 939594
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-58145
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
Computer displays
DECISION MAKING
HUMAN FACTORS
INTERCONNECTED POWER SYSTEMS
MAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS
OPERATION
POWER TRANSMISSION
computer interface human factors
decision making
decision support systems
display human factors
human factors
man-machine systems
power systems
situation awareness
user interfaces.