Toward Comprehensive Decision Support Using Multilevel Flow Modeling

The complexity of modern industrial plants poses significant challenges for the design of effective operator interfaces. Although established practices can significantly reduce the frequency of alarms, operators often cannot resolve the failure cascades commonly occurring during emergency situations.

Automating control rooms by incorporating design and operation knowledge about the systems can significantly improve operator efficacy. Intelligent support systems should reduce the amount of information and provide more context to the operators. The operators focus should be shifted from information acquisition to taking informed decisions about mitigation steps.

This contribution gives a brief review of the development of Multilevel Flow Modeling (MFM) and its application to provide operators with decision support and situation awareness, focusing on implementations directly utilising the knowledge represented in MFM. Finally, current efforts toward a comprehensive intelligent human machine interface for operators are outlined.