University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
Hum Factors. 2017 Dec;59(8):1263-1288. doi: 10.1177/0018720817731678. Epub 2017 Oct 5.
The aim of this study was to use multiple command teams to provide empirical evidence for understanding communication flow, information pertinence, and tasks undertaken in a submarine control room when completing higher- and lower-demand inshore operation (INSO) scenarios.
The focus of submarine operations has changed, and submarines are increasingly required to operate in costal littoral zones. However, submarine command team performance during INSO is not well understood, particularly from a sociotechnical systems perspective.
A submarine control-room simulator was built. The creation of networked workstations allowed a team of nine operators to perform tasks completed by submarine command teams during INSO. The Event Analysis of Systematic Teamwork method was used to model the social, task, and information networks and to describe command team performance. Ten teams were recruited for the study, affording statistical comparisons of how command-team roles and level of demand affected performance.
Results indicated that the submarine command-team members are required to rapidly integrate sonar and visual data as the periscope is used, periodically, in a "duck-and-run" fashion, to maintain covertness. The fusion of such information is primarily completed by the operations officer (OPSO), with this operator experiencing significantly greater demand than any other operator.
The OPSO was a bottleneck in the command team when completing INSO, experiencing similar load in both scenarios, suggesting that the command team may benefit from data synthesis tasks being more evenly distributed within the command team.
The work can inform future control-room design and command-team ways of working by identifying bottlenecks in terms of information and task flow between operators.
本研究旨在使用多个指挥团队，为理解潜艇控制室在执行高、低需求近岸作业（INSO）场景时的通信流程、信息相关性和任务提供实证依据。
潜艇作业的重点已经发生变化，潜艇越来越多地需要在沿海近岸区域作业。然而，对于 INSO 期间的潜艇指挥团队表现，人们的了解并不充分，特别是从社会技术系统的角度来看。
建造了一个潜艇控制室模拟器。通过创建联网工作站，允许由 9 名操作员组成的团队执行 INSO 期间潜艇指挥团队完成的任务。使用系统团队工作事件分析方法来构建社会、任务和信息网络，并描述指挥团队的表现。招募了 10 个团队参与研究，从而能够对指挥团队角色和需求水平如何影响表现进行统计比较。
结果表明，潜艇指挥团队成员需要在使用潜望镜时快速整合声纳和视觉数据，这种“进进出出”的方式需要定期进行，以保持隐蔽性。这种信息融合主要由作战官（OPSO）完成，该操作员承受的需求明显大于任何其他操作员。
在完成 INSO 时，OPSO 是指挥团队的瓶颈，在两种场景下都承受着类似的负荷，这表明指挥团队可能受益于将数据综合任务更均匀地分配到指挥团队中。
这项工作可以通过识别操作员之间信息和任务流的瓶颈，为未来控制室设计和指挥团队工作方式提供信息。
