Exploring an approach to connect the design of nuclear power plant control room systems to the cornerstones of resilience

Paper in proceeding, 2015

A nuclear power plant is a socio-technical system where safety issues are of greatest importance when designing the control room system. Resilience deals with safety in socio-technical systems and for resilient performance to be possible systems must be able to respond, monitor, learn and anticipate (the four cornerstones of resilience). The aim of this study was to explore how different aspects of the nuclear power plant control room system can be connected to the four abilities of resilient performance. A semi-structured interview study was made with 14 professionals working with operation or design of nuclear power plant control rooms. Five themes; situations, functions, tasks, characteristics, and structural elements were used to analyse their answers. The results showed how the themes functions, structural elements, and characteristics had the potential to describe the nature of concrete aspects of control room system design and connect them to the four basic resilient abilities. The results can be used to create design guidelines for development of control room systems. However, further input is needed, especially on how functions as well as structural elements and their characteristics may be used to affect the abilities to anticipate and to learn.