ML20248D563

Mod 2 to Cooperative Agreement NRC-04-97-064

ML20248D563
Person / Time
Issue date:	05/20/1998
From:	Mace M, Perkl R NRC OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATION (ADM), WISCONSIN STATE UNIV.
To:
References
CON-NRC-04-97-064, CON-NRC-4-97-64 NUDOCS 9806030034
Download: ML20248D563 (7)

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MODIFICATION NO. 2 TO COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT NO. NRC-04-97-064 BETWEEN UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON CENTER FOR HUMAN PERFORMANCE IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND THE U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION The purpose of this modification is to reflect a change in NRC Project Officer and to provide two (2) Statements of Work describing the effort agreed upon by NRC and the Cooperator. Accordingly, the following changes are hereby made:

1.

Block No. 9 Project Will Be Conducted Per Government's Proposal, is deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:

" Project Will Be Conducted per the Attached Statements of Work entitled

" Human Supervisory Control Personnel Performance Assessment and Fitness for Duty Evaluation Methods (2nd Revision)~ and " Risk Communication for Risk-Informed Regulation," which will be run in parallel, and Appendix A'- Project Cooperative Agreement Provisions" t

i 2.

Block No.12. NRC Program Office (Name & Address). is deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:

"U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research Attn: Ms. Catherine M.

Thompson l

RES/ DST /PRAB. Mail Stop T-10F13 l

Washington, DC '20555 l

Telephone No.

(301) 415-6981" i

All other terms and conditions, including the Cooperative Agreement ceiling amount of.-5325.000. remain the same.

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9906030034 980520 4

PDR CONTR l

>RC-04-97-064 PDR g

NRC-04-97-064 Modification No.

2 Page 2 A summary of obligations for this Cooperative Agreement, from award date through the date of this action. is given below:

Total FY97 Obligation Amount:

$325.000 Total FY98 Obligation Amount:

$ Total NRC Obligations:

$325.000 This modification obligates FY98 funds in the amount of 5 -0 EXECUTED:

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN @ MADISON UNITED STATES OF AMERICA RESEAR AND SPONSORED 0 GRAMS U.S. NUCLEA REGULAT R COMM SION BY:

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i NAME:

nahert R Pertt Admin.omeer NAME:

i Mary H. Mac V

Reseerth & Sponsored Programs TITLE:

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Contracting Officer DATE:

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Statement of Work Cooperative Agreement No. NRC-04-97-064 University of Wisconsin @ Madison l

l IUSK COMMUNICATION FOR RISK-INFORMED REGULATIOR Vicki Bier, PrincipalInvestigator

. Ilackground Extensive work has been done in the area of risk communication to laypeople; see for example references 1 - 10 below. However, with few exceptions (e.g., references 11 and 12), little attention has been paid to the issue of risk communication to decision makers (e.g., regulators or plant managers). While some of the literature on communicating risk to laypeople is certainly relevant to decision makers, there are undoubtedly some diffemnt issues as well. The advent of risk-informed regulation further increm the complexity of the issues that regulators must deal with in using risk results. Reference 12 identifies six barriers to the wider use of probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) in risk management decisions: (1) the lack of detailed regulatory guidance;.

'(2) the lack of accepted defaults for use in PRA; (3) inexperience on the part of key decision makers; (4) the potential for increased legal challenges; (5) mutual distrust between the regulator and licensees; and (6) difficulties in explaining risk-informed decisions to the public.

Purpos The purpose of the proposed project is to: (1) identify principles of risk communication to laypeople that are likely to be helpful and widely applicable when dealing with decision makers; (2) explore in detail some of the unique issues involved in risk communication to decision makers (especially regulators) and to the public; and (3) develcp guidance for risk

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communication to decision makers and to the public.

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Task 1: Literature Review We will review both the literature on risk communication to the public, and also the literature on risk comn'unication to decision makers. The review of the literature on risk communication to laypeople will focus on identifying key principles that are likely to carry over to decision-making contexts. By contrast, since the literature on risk conununication to decision makers is not as mature, it will be reviewed more with an eye to interesting nev ideas that should be considered,

'rather than general principles that can be readily accepted.

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l Statement of Work, continued 1 hsk 2: Workshop A ene-dty workshop will be held to generate neviideas on risk communication to decision makers and the public, and identify approaches from the literature that seem particularly j

promising. Participants will include a decision theorist (Vicki Dier, Department ofIndustrial Engineering), two experts on commtudcating risks to laypeople (William Freudenburg, Department of Rural Sociciogy: Sharon Dunwoody, School of Joumalism and Mass l

Communication), and two risk analysts with significant experience in communicating risk results l

to decision makers (Dennis Bley, Buttonwood Consulting; Kimberly Thompson, Harvard School of Public Health). The workshop will be preceded by a few selected readings identified from the i

I literatt:re review to establish a common basis for discussion.

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Dskl; Development of Guidaars l

The results ot the literature. : view and workshop will be summarized, and pron'ising ideas will be explored in more detail ss a basis for developing guidance both for conununicadic risk information to decision makers and for communicating tisk-infonned regulation to the puHic.

l Two separate forms of guidance are expected to be developed: (1) guidacce for use by risk j

analysts in presenting their results to decision makers (suggested formats, guidelines for identifying dominant contributors, etc.); and (2) guidance for use by regulators in ecmmunicating risk-informed regulation to the public. Examples of the issues that will be addressed include:

how to interpret correlations or dependencies in risk analysis results; how to interpret estimated changes in risk associated with risk reducdon actions; how to build and maintain public trust; and i

how to communicate very small probabilities to the public. (Several of these issues were initially explored in reference 13.) Guidance will be based on both decision theoretic principles and available empirical results from the literature.

Products As discussed in Task 3 above, the results of this work will be suggested guidance both for communicating risk analysis results to decision makers, and for communicating risk-informed regulation to the public. This guidance is expected to improve decision makers' understanding of PRA results for use in risk-informed regulation, and to facilitate effective communication of risk-informed regulation to the public. Topics for further (more empirically based) research in risk communication may also be identified.

Statement of Work, continued l Reference.s

1. Covello, McCallum, and Pavlova (1989), Effective Risk Conununication, Plenum.

2. Dunwoody and Neuwirth (1991), "Comieg to Terms with the Impact of Communication on Scientific and Technological Risk Judgments," in Risky Business: Cornmunication Issues of Science, Risk, and Public Policy, Greenwood Press.

3. Freudenburg and Rutsch (1994), "The Risks of'Puttir,g the Numbers in Context': A Cautionary Tale," in Risk Analysis, Vol.14, No. 6, pp. 949-950.

4. Gow and Otway (1990), Communicating with the Public about Major Accident Hazards, Elsevier.

5. Hance, Chess, and Sandman (1990), Industry Risk Communication Manual, Lewis.

6. Kasperson and Stallen (1991), Communicating Risks to the Public, Kluwer.

7. Leiss (1989), Prospects and Problems in Risk Communication, Institute for Risk Research.

8. Moore (1989), Health Risks and the Press, The Media Institute.

9. National Research Council (1989), Improving Risk Conununication, National Academy Press.

10. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (1991), Nuclear Energy:

Communicating with the Public.

I !. Brown and Ulvila (1987), " Communicating Uncertainty for Regulatory Decisions," in Covello, Lave, Moghissi, and Uppuluri (Eds.), Uncertainty in Risk Assessment, Risk Management, and Decision Making, Plenur:1.

12. Thompson and Graham (1996)," Going Beyond the Single Number: Using Probabilistic Risk Assessment to Improve Risk Management.," Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, Vol.

2, No. 4, pp.1008-1034.

13. Bier (1989), "On the Treatment of Dependence in Making Decisions about Risk," in Tmnsactions of the 10th Intemational Conference on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMIRT), Vol. P, pp. 63-68, American Association for SMIRT.

a Statement of Work Cooperative Agreement No. NRC-04-97-064 University of Wisconsin @ Madison B) man Supervisory Control PersomuiEstfqabancs_hlessment and Fitness for Duty Evaluation Methods (2nd REVISION)

Barrett S. Caldwell, Ph.D., Principal Investigator Associate Professor, Department ofIndustrial Engineering BACKGROUND A continuing concern in human supervisory control systems is that personnel performance capabilities may not be sufficient to respond to task demands in critical situations. Personnel selection and training programs are intended to climinate the most global factors influencing human perform'ance capability. However, even well-trained personnel may suffer from temporarily reduced fitness for duty due to fatigue, biochemical impairment, or injury. System safety and productivity are dependent on the ability to identify human performance capability and fitness for duty on a fine-grained level (at least once per shift, if not more frequently) for personnel in safety critical roles operating and maintaining high-risk technologies.

Three major methods of personnel assessment have been proposed for use: physiological state estimates, behavioral and task measures, and subjective assessments. There are technological advantages and disadvantages to each of these methods; each method also has distinct organizational and human resource implementation concems. Evaluation methods that do not combine the best technological and organizational components appropriate for the person's task demands are doomed to failure. The proposed project is intended to identify the current state of the art in evaluation methods, implementation strategies, and task contexts for determining acute fitness for duty changes.

OVERVIEW l

The proposed project will cover the period April 1,1998 - November 30,1998. 'lhe project will summarize and compare human performance and fitness for duty evaluations for operations, maintenance, and supervisory control personnel. Evaluation tools to be examined will be classified in the following broad groups:

1)

Physiological state estimates: these methods include biochemical and physiological assays, activity and sleep measures, and vital sign data collection (such as heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse);

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Behavioral and task measures: these are performance-based measures of fitness for duty, such as reaction time tasks, secondary task performance scores, or traffic sobriety tests; and i

o-1 Statement of Work, continued l 3)

Subjective assessments: these are self-ratings, peer-ratings, or supervisor ratings of personnel ability to perform needed tasks, based on the evaluater's understanding of task demands and observations of task-related activity.

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l Both the perfornumce assessment / fitness for duty evaluation tools themselves, and practices of organizational implementations, will be examined. Primarily manual perforenance tasks (facility maintenance workers) have very different fitness for duty demands than automated or supervisory control tasks (control room operators). These different demands are based on the task dynamics, level of system reJundancy. and nature of task feedback itself.

The type of fitness for duty concerns in particular facilities strongly influence the sampling rate cf the performance evaluation tool. For many practical task settings, fitness for duty is only assessed at the beginning of a shift, based on the assumption that factors that might influence fitness for duty (such as drowsiness based on cold remedy use) are not increasing over the duration of the shift. Other settings prefer to perform assessments frequently. Secondary task and physiological evaluations can be most easily adapted for continuous fitness for duty measures.

The variety of fitness for duty evaluation tools and implementation strategies requires a combination of project tasks. The project will begin with a literature review of currently used fitn::ss for duty or performance assessment tools described in the professional practice and research literature. Based on this literature review, the project team will identify a range of specific tools to summarize and evaluate for their fitness for duty strengths and weaknesses relative to the nuclear power plant (or other supenisory control) environment. Finally, the project team will conduct site visits and interviews to examine current practices at two nuclear power and two non-nuclear production Scilities. Nuclear power sites who have agreed to provide facility tours are Braidwood,IL, and Palo Verde, AZ. The Principal Investigator also has access to semiconductor production and petrochemical processing facilities which will be used as comparison sites. Interviews will be conducted with representative sets of employees (maintenance staffs, control room operators, technicians) to detennine pace of work issues and other task-specific or site specific considerations that influence fitness for duty evaluation strategies. Interviews with supervisors (including operations and maintenance supervisors and human resources personnel) will identify current organizational practices and willingness to explore alternative evaluation techniques.

The outcomes of this project will include a report outlining the theoretical and practical issues underlying the opportunities and limits to fitness for duty evaluations in the nuclear power plant environment. The report will provide examples of"best practices" of organizations utilizing various technologies and implementation strategies. In addition, the report will present emerging u f

tools to improve the quality, reliability, and task integration of specific human perfonnance l

assessment and fitness for duty evaluation.