ABSTRACT
Automation has increased the importance of the need to understand and control the factors that influence human monitoring behavior. This chapter discusses the interrelationships of automation and monitoring and the corresponding implications for the design of automated systems. It has become commonplace to point out that human monitoring can be subject to errors. Although this is sometimes the case, in many instances operational monitoring can be quite efficient. Because case reports and other sources of evidence suggest that human monitoring can be inefficient, particularly after long periods of time at work, automating the monitoring function has been proposed as a solution. In general, machine monitoring may be an effective design strategy in particular instances, particularly for lower-level functions. In fact, machine monitoring is used extensively in many complex systems. Among the factors that may influence efficiency of monitoring under automation are the task load imposed on the operator and the availability of feedback.
