Start
Nov 16, 2017 - 11:00
End
Nov 16, 2017 - 12:00
Venue
Room No. 240 1-st floor Chem. Engg. dept
Event Type
Speaker
Prof. Rajagopalan Srinivasan from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Title
Cognitive Engineering for Process Safety: Towards Foretelling Operator Failure in Real-time
Abstract: Human error plays a predominant role in accidents. Various studies claim that 80% to 85% of all accidents across domains ranging from aviation medicine road transportation nuclear power plants to chemical process plants originate from human error. The systematic study of human failures started in the 1970s post the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident but has predominantly been restricted to a risk assessment viewpoint i.e. developing estimates of human error rates and incorporating human factors based interventions in the design stage. Our research is targeted at developing a science-based approach to proactively detect human errors. Since ensuring safe operation requires the active mental involvement of the operator in our research we develop cognitive engineering based approaches for ensuring process safety. Cognitive science and engineering is a new interdisciplinary field that studies the mind and its processes. In this talk I will provide a panoramic view of our research on the cognitive factors that drive process operations. As an example we will discuss patterns in the eye gaze and pupil dilation of control room operators that seem to foretell human error.About the Speaker: Rajagopalan Srinivasan is currently with the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Madras. Previously he was with the National University of Singapore and IIT Gandhinagar. Raj received his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and PhD from Purdue University both in Chemical Engineering. He was a research associate in Honeywell Technology Center Minneapolis before joining NUS. Raj’s research program is targeted towards developing artificial intelligence inspired systems engineering approaches for design and operation of complex systems. His research has resulted in over 115 peer-reviewed journal papers and over 285 international conferences presentations. He is an Editor of Process Safety and Environmental Protection journal and on the Editorial board of several journals. His research has been recognized by best paper awards from Computers and Chemical Engineering and IEEE Industrial Informatics.