Type of Document	Master's Thesis
Author	Uhack II, Glen David
URN	etd-04292010-235934
Title	Empirically Evaluating and Developing Alarm Rate Standards for Liquid Pipeline Control Room Operators
Degree	Master of Science in Industrial Engineering (M.S.I.E.)
Department	Construction Management and Industrial Engineering
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Harvey, Craig M. Committee Chair Aghazadeh, Fereydoun Committee Member Knapp, Gerald Committee Member
Keywords	Liquid Pipeline Control Rooms Control Room Alarm System Performance
Date of Defense	2010-03-22
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract The liquid and gas pipeline community has recently been faced with the challenge of new governmental regulations set forth by congress which are being implemented by PHMSA (an arm of the DOT). These new governmental regulations need to understand the role of the human in the loop as part of alarm management systems. To investigate alarm rate standards a repeated measures design was developed that included a series of ten (10) simulated liquid pipeline operator scenarios utilizing high fidelity liquid pipeline simulation software (Stoner Pipeline Simulator). A total of 39 participants volunteered for this study. Participants completed two subsets of experiments, five were completed using an alarm display presenting alarms by time (chronological) and the remaining five experiments were completed using a categorical alarm display. Statistically significant differences were found to exist in participant response time, acknowledgement time, and accuracy of response given different alarm display types and alarm rates. Use of the categorical alarm display resulted in significantly reduced alarm acknowledgement and response times. Also, a severe operator performance reduction with regard to alarm handling was observed when the alarm rate was increased from ten alarms per ten minutes (10-alarms/10-minutes) to twenty alarms per ten minutes (20-alarms/10-minutes).
Files	Filename       Size       Approximate Download Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds)     28.8 Modem   56K Modem   ISDN (64 Kb)   ISDN (128 Kb)   Higher-speed Access    GlenUhackII.pdf 1.85 Mb 00:08:34 00:04:24 00:03:51 00:01:55 00:00:09

If you have questions or technical problems, please Contact LSU-ETD Support.