Citation

Moray N. Int. J. Ind. Ergonomics 2003; 31(3): 175-178.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

There have been several claims that operators exercising supervisory control over automated systems can become too trusting if the systems are highly reliable. This has been called "complacent" behaviour. While it is true that operators sometimes fail to observe faults or other important signals, a quantitative analysis of monitoring behaviour shows that not even optimal sampling can detect all abnormal events. A "failure" to monitor is more likely to be a eutactic strategy than complacency. Such a quantitative analysis emphasizes the importance of alarms rather than monitoring for the efficient supervisory control of highly reliable systems.

Relevance to industry: It is important that the notion of "complacency" is properly understood. In evaluating an automated human-machine system, the claim that automation fosters complacency implies that operators are at fault. Better motivation or better training will improve the performance. But if even optimal sampling cannot guarantee the level of performance which is desired, radical system re-design is required, because the problem lies in the system characteristics, not in the performance of human operators.