Multitasking and Interruption Management in Control Room Operator Work During Simulated Accidents

Our everyday life is full of interruptions, which cause problems in different situations. Therefore, efficient management of interruptions is a natural part of our daily activity, and we humans are experts at managing task switching and interruptions. Efficient management of interruptions is required in many tasks and domains such as in health care, aviation, car driving and office work. This paper focusses on control room (CR) operator work in nuclear power plants. CR operators have to manage interruptions in various plant states, and sometimes interruptions cause problems in their work. This paper is divided into two major parts: the first part is a short literature review of effects of multitasking and interruptions in work settings; the second part presents some experimental results of multitasking and interruption management during simulated accidents. Some suggestions are given to improve interruption and multitasking management in safety-critical domains.

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