Decision Making for Process Control Management in Control Rooms: a Survey Methodology and Initial Findings

Control rooms and their operators are active elements in complex socio-technical systems such as process plants. Control room operators monitor process operations, respond to alarms, and manage process deviations until emergencies. The increase in automation of plants and equipment makes the operators less involved in manual process control or other physical roles while more exposed to cognitive load generated, for example, by increasing the number of alarms or potential system failures in abnormal situations. A shift in process control design and management techniques to holistically capture risks due to evolving process or monitoring capabilities and the related influencing factors is necessary. This study aims to collate and understand existing approaches for decision-making on process control design and management of safety-critical operations through a proposed survey methodology. Based on the preliminary results and recommendations, it appears that a human-centered approach to assessing and enhancing process control elements for human-in-the-loop configurations in process control rooms could be a promising path forward for decision-making for process control management.