AN ANALYSIS OF OPERATOR EYE BEHAVIOR WHEN MONITORING SIMULATED, PETROCHEMICAL MANUFACTURING, SUPERVISORY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION ALERTS AND WARNINGS WITH BACKGROUND NOISE

Abstract

There are a number of potential distractions for operators when viewing plant status-monitoring information in a petrochemical plant: background noises of other employees speaking, sounds of manufacturing equipment and processes and other ambient noises like HVAC and building operation noise. When the monitoring equipment for a chemical or petrochemical plant is not designed to take into account that operators can be distracted by this noise, there is a potential safety hazard for the people in that work environment. Alarms can be missed and fundamental information can be overlooked. SCADA is “a type of control system that collects and displays data and allows users to manipulate and control the system from a distant location (Koffskey, 2010).” SCADA is used in various industries such as energy, food and beverage, manufacturing, oil and gas, power, recycling, transportation, and water and waste water (Gould, 2017). In the petrochemical industry, the status of individual instruments is monitored by one or a few supervisors at a central command station with a SCADA screen. The focus of this research is to determine if there is a difference in user eye behavior (Time to First Fixation, Fixation Frequency per AOI, Gaze Duration Mean, and Gaze Percentage per AOI) between no (minimal) ambient noise and ambient noise for users when viewing alerts/warnings on a petrochemical manufacturing SCADA user interface? 100 participants (with a science, engineering, or manufacturing background) were asked to watch two sets of simulated SCADA prototypes (half with petrochemical manufacturing noise and half without) while wearing a set of eye-tracking glasses. The Wilconox Rank Sum Test determined that there was a statistically significant difference in the data sets (with three of the four dependent variables) demonstrating that sound is statistically significant in distracting operators watching a petrochemical SCADA user interface.