Extended support for accident analysis in the Test Control Room

The Test Control Room (TCR) is an engineering simulator in a screen-based control room environment. The several purposes of the TCR are described, with emphasis on safety studies of accidental situations which require consideration of the man-machine interface and the feedback imposed by the operating shift's actions. First, the characteristics of the present TCR are described with respect to employed models, visualization, and interactive control. Then, the concept of the TCR extensions for a second development phase are presented, which are intended to offer access to knowledge beyond mere simulation and useful in the analyses proposed. One such knowledge source necessary for procedure analysis consists of the operating and emergency procedures, another one is the vast knowledge acquired by probabilistic analysis. The use of these knowledge sources in decision support systems is discussed. The realization of the extended TCR will rely on a network of workstations or personal computers, with several software agents including on-line expert system shells. (orig.)