Situation awareness: State of the art

This paper describes active research on situation awareness (SA) as it applies to the power transmission and distribution (T&D) industry. Recent emphases on situation awareness in the power T&D industry have highlighted the lack of SA-related research in this domain. This gap has been recognized by several organizations, leading to the development of new commercial energy management systems, reactive reserve monitoring tools, and visualization systems designed to assist T&D operators in monitoring, predicting, anticipating, and preventing potential problems that could lead to major power outages. The essential element in each of these endeavors is a focused effort on understanding and increasing operator SA in T&D control centers. The power T&D domain presents multiple vantage points upon which operator SA can be improved. The power T&D industry continues to seek a solution to its situation awareness gap. The work described in this paper helps to identify areas where SA needs are lacking within the industry, and provides valuable insights to inform the development of future technology to support SA in the power T&D domain.