Applicability of the TACOM measure as a tool to identify a high workload task in a proceduralized task environment

Abstract

One of the important requirements to ensure the sustainability of socio-technical systems such as nuclear power plants is to operate them as safely as possible. To this end, it is indispensable to identify and manage the critical factors that can affect their operational safety. As historical events strongly support the significance of human performance degradations (e.g., human errors) on the operational safety of socio-technical systems, the specification of tasks with the potential to result in high workload conditions is crucial for preventing the degradation of human performance. In this study, based on the TACOM (Task Complexity) measure, a novel framework is proposed with two distinctive rules that enables the identification of tasks that could give a high workload to human operators. In order to investigate the applicability of the proposed framework, a case study is carried out using performance data of human operators collected from a large-scale simulation study. As a result, in cases where operators have to accomplish required tasks described in a procedure (i.e., a proceduralized task environment), it seems to be positive to conclude that the proposed framework can be soundly used for identifying high workload tasks.