Promoting Operational Readiness of Control Room Crews Through Biosignal Measurements.

Challenging operational tasks, such as complex, unexpected incidents and severe accidents are characterised by an increase of operators’ mental demands, stress-induced deterioration of cognitive capacity and increased time pressure to resolve the situation. This combination can negatively affect the operator crew’s performance. This paper describes the progress of a research project that models the stress and workload of 54 nuclear power plant operators during simulated incident and accident scenarios. Here, we demonstrate how an extensive empirical field study with psychophysiological assessments can be successfully performed in a simulator with free movement. Also, the modelling approach to examine the relationship between the stress and workload, and performance, with moderating effects of operator role and the efficiency of the abnormal and emergency operations procedure (OPs) use will be described. Even though some observations will be made, the results of the study are, at this point, preliminary.