EVALUATING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS OF VTMS USERS USING PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES

Abstract

Vessel tra c controlling and monitoring is one of the most complex and safety critical activity in a harbour environment. In spite of all computerized vessel tra c monitoring environments on a modern harbor controlling centers, operators still lose their situational awareness which results in catastrophic disasters and fatal ship accidents. Reasons for this might be excessive cognitive workload caused by too many instruments to read and compile, vessel tra c information that is displayed in a cognitively demanding way. In order to enhance situational awareness of vessel tra c operators to respond to situations, currently there are two kind of vessel tra c monitoring systems (VTMS) in 2D and 3D form. This study aims to investigate the better VTMS model among 2D and 3D interfaces for providing a better situational awareness about a harbor environment. The concept of situational awareness may lead to better understanding of user performance in a harbor environment including the capacity to handle maneuvering operations in a harbor. For assessing SA, this study proposes a method to use psychophysiological measures captured from electroencephalography (EEG) data. This research is aimed at an important knowledge gap in contemporary cognitive science and VTMS domain. The implications of this research will not be limited to those two domains, but also to other domains like e-learning, computer games and computer simulations.