Beautiful

The project

There is no complete automation in decision-making in the electricity and gas grid—the decision-making power always lies with the control center staff. Technical assistance systems that offer decision support based on measurable data are already in use today to support control center staff. However, more advanced assistance systems specially adapted to the increasingly complex monitoring and control tasks are urgently needed. In order to build transparency and trust in such systems, it is essential to evaluate and determine the added value for control center personnel. However, this evaluation cannot currently be standardized. 

An interdisciplinary consortium is addressing this challenge in the project “Beautiful – Stress-optimized work design for control centers of critical infrastructure.” The aim is to systematically record the stress levels of control center personnel using cognitive measurement technology in order to develop ergonomic assistance systems based on this data. Newly developed control room simulators are being used to investigate and test the assistance systems.

Project duration: 01.01.2023 –30.04.2026

Technical solution approach

The Beautiful project is dedicated to the development and structured evaluation of assistance systems for control centers in the electricity and gas grid. To this end, two control center simulators - one in an academic environment and one at the grid operator- are being developed and put into operation. Similar to a flight simulator, these will enable an ergonomic assessment of the physiopsychological conditions of control center personnel under various stress conditions using a variety of measurement techniques, such as eye-tracking technology and smart shirts that enable AI-supported sensor fusion. The assistance systems developed can then be tested within the control center simulators by control center personnel from network operators. In addition, personnel can be prepared and trained for critical situations in the simulators.

Beautiful is thus making a significant contribution to the ergonomic development of assistance systems for network control centers. It enables the benefits of newly developed assistance systems to be evaluated in simulated critical situations.

PSI CONTRIBUTION: PSI is working on a trainer-student system in the gas sector that is designed to simulate realistic interaction in a control room.

In addition, scenarios were developed within the consortium for the existing electricity trainer-student system and run through with control center personnel. During this process, the workload and associated stress levels were measured using various sensors.