Span of Awareness, Scope of Operation (Responsibility)!!!!

These are terms and concepts that will become a normal wording when defining the new paradigms in Operational Experience of the “Distributed Multi Point Operational Landscapes”.

Two weeks I posted “The Changing Landscape of Supervisory System from HMI, CCR to “Distributed Multi Point Operational Landscapes”, and there was a significant interest, and questions (on email as normal), so I thought I continue to answer some of the topics.  For the last couple of weeks I have been involved in a number of projects that these concepts are having to sorted and defined, in order to complete the design.

So let’s clarify what we mean:

Span of Awareness:

Span of Awareness is relative to what a user / worker is exposed to, this means through the device (control room, mobile phone, tablet, remote station etc) and notification systems he is logged on too, now that the systems are becoming “self-aware”.  Traditionally the worker has only been aware of the equipment and process states that his UI could show but today this is changing to a worker/ member of the “operational team” being notified when the situation of the process is in an abnormal state, and the worker could contribute to resolution.

The concept of “always being connected” now applies to the industrial landscape, and with virtual operational team members being key to modern actionable decision chain.

Scope of Operation (Responsibility):

Scope of responsibility relates to what a work is assign, what “activities” that fall under the workers responsibility at this time. Based upon location, what the worker logs onto, or passed what activities (tasks) to perform, the system must be aware, and provide the worker with first up awareness, and then responsibility. Key is workers, responsibility and activities can vary from day to day, the system must handle this. Scope of Responsibility is very important when managing alarms, as the initial response needs to assigned to the correct user, this maybe not a station.

This is a new dynamic in the distributed supervisory solutions, where the no longer can you design responsibility of control to a station, as what is a station? A responsible user could be on a mobile devices, logon to a fixed station in the system, and drill into a situation and take an action, but that station could not at the location, or temporarily manned.

Example:

This concept is so important with alarms. Let’s take an “unconventional “Gas field” where we can have a compressor station (which there can 100s) with a local supervisory station, but this station will on be “sometimes manned”, as required for local operations. Now traditionally systems would have designed so all alarms from the compressor station would go to that station. But that is no longer valid, as no one maybe at the station, so the system must be aware if the station is manned, and who has current operational control responsibility for that station. This could be the overall IOC (Integrated Operation Center) or a particular user who maybe be driving between sites, and will connected by a mobile device, he would get notified and take action, which maybe logon at the closest station and take actions on whatever compressor station had the alarm.

This is a dynamic environment where responsibility of control changes between people, and how they interact with the system.  This leads to the design requirement I outlined for alarms two weeks ago.

 Management of alarms: it is essential for safety, legal, environmental and health requirements that new alarms animate, suppress/shelve, annunciate and trigger display changes only at the point(s) of operation, and only the workers using the point(s) of operation can acknowledge or silence new alarms. This means all alarms from asset to process, operational, but scope of alarm responsibility is aligned with span of operation (responsibility) but as a team there are “no blind spots” and alarm, situational awareness is escalated based on responsiveness, and situation. Assumption of control, and someone doing something must be removed.

The last statement is very important, when you have a dynamic operational team, you must avoid “blind spots” and if in the above example the responsible worker did not respond to alarm in a given time, or the situation gets worse, the system must escalate automatically to the next level, avoiding un awareness, and managed situation becoming critical.

The other concept introduced two weeks ago was the “assignment of Operation”, it is important due changing situation that operational responsibility of an asset can be changed to a more suited worker. Example above if I knew as the remote worker that I was going to drive to next station and I would lose connectivity I would pass control back to IOC, but I would not leave the current station and connectivity until the IOC “accepted” responsibility, and was aware that they now have responsibility for that area, and the system will expect alerts, alarms to action-ed from the IOC.  

Assignment of operation: an authorized worker must have an easy and reliable means to assign and adjust the spans of operation. 

Again I refer to the diagram below, that of the Flexible Operational team and how they will work together, avoiding “blind spots” and providing team work that will enable the fastest actionable decision and resolution. 

Over the last couple of weeks as I view designs I see people applying traditional thinking, a modern system may be distributed for high availability, and isolation control, but they are still apart of one operational platform. Where operational work, events, and situational awareness of the whole system is managed as a team.

Are you building this into your design?  

Effective Situational Awareness (Actionable Decisions) requires “Engineers to evolve to Artists.”

Industrial situational Awareness is a key concept for the future of supervisory/ operational systems. Moving beyond ASM (abnormal situational Management standards) which have had mixed success, not due to standard, but due to implementations. Understanding this subtle difference in implementation is when we start talking “engineers evolving to an artistic, human factor aware.”

This image shows a traditional process screen with photo like images, and the right hand image shows the intensity of eye focus based upon color and drawings. The issue is the awareness of the alarms up the top or indication symbols up the top are lost, this is where the ASM brings a cleaner view, as seen in the image below where this same screen has been evolved to ASM. Yet even that design can be improved.

Last week we had the Australian User Conference combining old Invensys and Schneider Electric, many productive discussions. However, one that stood out was with a college Rik De Smet around the effective situational awareness. Rik like me has been involved in a number of operational centers most notably one in Oman across 70 existing DCS systems . Where the project applied ASM (Abnormal Situational Management concepts) but derived from human factor experts in Holland, where they looked not just the effect of grey, but went well beyond into understanding the tracking of a user’s eye. The results drove screen layout, color and application of awareness.

The conversations last week went beyond this, to the fact that now many companies have released ASM based graphic libraries, and how many engineers are applying them without the full thought. Yes, it brings improved results, by de-cluttering the experience, but there is another level of operational value. It has been proven in upstream oil and gas, transportation, mining that well applied “situational awareness” (ASM) applied at graphics, and alarms regularly provides 30 to 40 % improvement in awareness and responsiveness over traditional screens with photo generic and many colors.  

Rik has been taking this to a new level with tools to evaluate engineered screens and to see where the focus is, and to provide feedback to designer. These tools, track the eye focus and intensity of eye focus (distraction) to a spot or image. Providing valuable feedback for the designer to adjust the layout and effect. With good examples of what appeared to be an effective ASM type screen, with some managed tools taking into account “human factor.” A heat map showing that same screen with actual eye focus, and it was clear that tuning was required in order to gain that early awareness that was expected.

This image is now showing a typical ASM screen applying standards in ASM, and alarm borders around critical equipment. Many people would be satisfied with this, but when you now apply the eye intensity tool, to that same screen, you do see focus on the critical equipment in the middle. But you also see a loss in focus to the bottom, navigation buttons and even company logo, all of which are not important in awareness of the plant state.

This insight brought a new level of true “human factor” and effective “artistic” side to play in the design, to enable a step up in results to the next level of value. For me, it brought reality to a factor I suspected that the system engineers going forward from today, need extra tools, or someone in the project requires the expertise. There are online human factor tools coming available, and these services will become vital in the next few years.

We combine this “early awareness” to enable decisions, but the real requirement is to go to “actionable decisions” that empower the user to lead to a decisions, and action very rapidly that is a best operational practice. In another conversation my mind went back to Hudson River plane landing, where the pilots did not speak for 3 minutes, that took roles, made decisions, and action ed out well trained operational procedures that enabled rapid success. The two pilots had not met prior to that take off, but they were able to combine to execute. The only way we can bring this into industry through the changing of operational approach, embedding experience and process, so we do not just enable decisions, but “actionable decisions.”