A fuzzy dynamic bayesian network-based situation assessment approach

Situation awareness (SA), a state in the mind of a human, is essential to conduct decision-making activities. It is about the perception of the elements in the environment, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future. Two decades of investigation and analysis of accidents have showed that SA was behind of many serious large-scale technological systems' accidents. This emphasizes the importance of SA support systems development for complex and dynamic environments. This paper presents a fuzzy dynamic Bayesian network-based situation assessment approach to support the operators in decision making process in hazardous situations. The approach includes a dynamic Bayesian network-based situational network to model the hazardous situations where the existence of the situations can be inferred by sensor observations through the SCADA monitoring system using a fuzzy quantizer method. In addition to generate the assessment result, a fuzzy risk estimation method is proposed to show the risk level of situations. Ultimately a hazardous environment from U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigation reports has been used to illustrate the application of proposed approach. © 2013 IEEE