This chart demonstrates the resilience-oriented approach to resolving design dilemmas.

The dilemma

When the designer, or the operators, set the alarm threshold, they need to trade the rate of missed alarms with that of improper alarms ( more ...).

From science to engineering

The science of cognitive psychology introduced the alarm dilemma. We can reduce the rate of missed alarms, but then we need to increase the rate of improper alarms. Alternatively, we can reduce the rate of improper alarm, by the penalty is an increase of missed alarms.

Engineering enables designing a solution:

• Cognitive engineering helps designing on the optimal tradeoff in various conditions
• System engineering helps implementing this tradeoff

The resilience-oriented approach

The approach of this guide is that the whole tradeoff curve should be lowered.

Design goals

Design goals are about alarms quality and reliability ( more )

Example

We can add sensors and fault indicators, to enable fault detection, so that the rate of both the missed alarms and the improper alarms are reduced, as described by the arrow on the chart.

Updated on 20 Dec 2016.