Knowledge of organisational hierarchy, responsibilities, communications, and who must be informed about events. Knowledge of administrative and operating documents. Knowledge of rules for safe operation and safety at work. Knowledge of supervisory organisation. We can examine these kinds of knowledge at a different level of detail if we examine the characteristics of the systems in which people make real decisions as well as the psychological mechanisms required to perform them.
Industrial systems have the following characteristics.
In modern control rooms there will be arrays of computers, more than 250 pages of information. The plant serviced by the control room is physically large perhaps many stories high and many hectares in extent. Operators need to understand the physical topology of the plant. The system is typically open that is, there is always the possibility of completely new events which have not been foreseen by designers. The system changes over time.