Control Room Operators’ Cognitive Strategies in Complex Troubleshooting

The aim of the present study was to investigate control room operators’ troubleshooting performance and adaptive readiness in nuclear domain with a new version of a virtual reality control room (VR CR) system. The VR CR was a high fidelity copy of a physical CR. The test session consisted of five simulated incidents. Two operator crews were recruited. In addition, one separate crew participated in the pilot test. This paper focuses on analysis of individual process-tracing and debriefing interviews, performed after each simulator run. Our results showed that all the failures were successfully found and perceived with one exception. The operators were also able to formulate hypotheses about the cause of the failure and make plans on how to test a hypothesis and evaluate the evidence. On the other hand, the crews experienced some problems in problem monitoring and process control due to the problems caused by the VR system.