Evaluation of an alarm system using Signal Detection Theory (SDT)

When the process disturbance of nuclear power plant occurred, the operator should ensure plant safety, economy and identify the causes of disturbance. To accomplish these goals, operator should process a large amounts of information. Among these, alarms would be often in the operator's first indication of a plant state change or disturbance. To support limited information processing capability of operator, considerable works are under way to develop advanced alarm processing systems and to evaluate it. However, conventional evaluation method could provide just evaluation results but the design alternatives to enhance alarm system performance. To overcome problems associated with conventional evaluation methods of alarm system, signal detection theory (SDT) was introduced, and it was possible conclude that SDT could not only evaluate system but also suggest design alternatives for performance enhancement