HCP08- Workshop on Supervisory Control in Critical Systems Management

consultancy, researches on methodologies for creating user centered designs for critical systems. In this context, we are currently conducting field studies at the signal cabins of the Belgian national railway organization. We devised a specific approach for conducting field studies in supervisory control systems, based on ethnomethodology, situation awareness, and mental models represented as an abstraction hierarchy. The field studies are particularly targeted at uncovering important aspects of human computer interaction for supervisory control: interaction among humans, interactions between the human operator and the computer, situation awareness, and decision making. The field study is aimed at providing a clear overview of the work environment, tasks and cognitive load of the signalers and of possible bottlenecks in the current way of operating. Index Terms — Patterns, methods and tools for field studies: situation awareness, ethnomethodology patterns; Multi-agent distributed decision making; Cognition-based approaches for awareness and decision support: abstraction hierarchy I