The development and evaluation of guidelines for the review of advanced human-system interfaces

Advanced control rooms for future nuclear power plants are being designed utilizing computer-based technologies. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews the human engineering aspects of such control rooms to ensure that they are designed to good human factors engineering principles and that operator performance and reliability are appropriately supported in order to protect public health and safety. This paper describes a general approach to advanced human-system interface review, development of human factors guidelines to support NRC safety reviews of advanced systems, and the results of a guideline test and evaluation program.