On operator diagnosis aid in severe earthquakes

During a severe earthquake, any component, system, or structure may fail; the plant may be driven into a very complex situation in which instrumentaion and control systems may also fail and provide operators with unreliable information about the processing parameters crucial to plant safety. What can operators do when faced with such complexity. Even though the likelihood of such a severe earthquake may be very low, its consequence may be more serious if mitigative measures are not thought out and implemented in advance. The objectives of the present study is related to the measures to protect the plant from severe damage due to large earthquakes, namely, the improvement of operator capability to respond to seismic damage through the use of Emergency Procedure Guidelines (EPGs). The fact that the symptoms presented to operators may be unreliable in severe earthquakes endangers the validity of actions in EPGs. It is the purpose of this study to design a tool through which study may be done so that the weakness of EPGs may be identified in advance then, if possible, according to the practice results some learning may be obtained so that EPGs may be improved to accomodate the complexity to a maximum. In other words, the present study intends to provide a tool which may simulate available signals, including false ones, such that EPGs may be examined and operator actions may be studied. It is hoped to develop some knowledge needed to complement the currently available knowledge. The final product of this study shall be a program which may provide users the rationale on how it reachs conclusions such that users may improve their knowledge, as well as a program whose knowledge may be updated via user interfacing