Forprosjekt. Human Factors in eOperation environments - building situation awareness in virtual teams

From a human factors point of view, eOperations introduce new aspects for the operators and the other participants in the decision process. What is the effect on the human participants and the teamand are eOperation centres and the collaboration between them set up in a way that will support interactions and decisions in a tem the best way? Are integrated operations prone to "Normal Accidents" (Perrow)? Technologically, the systems will become more complex. The coupling between the compo nents will remain tight or even become tighter. More participants are introduced and there is a possibility for a more decentralised control and a more vague sense of role and responsibility. In eOperation, operators must form mental models as a basis for their decisions. How are these mental models formed in and between the new operating centres? Work in specialised and complex tasks show signs of sociointeracional behaviour (shared meanings and understandings that remain stable for brie f periods of time and collaborative production of tasks) and logics. What are demands on competence for those operators working in these environments? In the pre-project we will: *Bring out state of the art in knowledge about human factors in virtual tea ms and eOperation equivalent environments and bring light to some of the questions asked above to form more qualified hypothesis in a later project. *See the challenges addressed in this proposal in light of SINTEFs initiative on a forum for the CRIOP m ethod and human factors in control rooms in the petroleum industry. *Look for experience from other industries, e.g. aviation and nuclear power industry *Draw on experience from work in the ?HSE Petroleum - Change Organization and Technology? project wher e similar questions are asked from a research perspective. *Discover if there are grounds for a larger project as addressed before and if there is need to discover the field of human factors in eOperatio