ABSTRACT
The defining elements of naturalistic decision-making, such as proficient decision makers, ill-defined goals, uncertainty, high stakes, tools, and teamwork, are clearly present in process control. However, the domain is still heavily anchored in normative approaches for design, analysis and evaluation of human-technology systems that make unrealistic assumptions about the operators. The paper presents two naturalistic decision making models for process control developed in the nuclear power production sector and based on extensive observations of control room emergency operation in high-fidelity, human-in-the-loop simulators: the Guidance-Expertise Model (GEM) and the Model of Resilience in Situation (MRS). Unlike better-known naturalistic decision-making models, the GEM and MRS models recognize the central role that operating procedures and other organizational prescriptions play in process control decision making, elaborating on aspects that so far have received little attention in the naturalistic decision making community.
