Approaches to Human Performance Modeling of Electric Grids Operators

Abstract

Due to the integration of digital technology, electric grids have become more complex and vulnerable to cyber-attacks. A worst-case scenario cyber-attack could result in a blackout, leading to significant financial loss or life-threatening events. For prioritizing limited investment, cascading failure analysis with simulation is one way to understand impacts and to provide insights into how a blackout might happen. Human operators play an important role in mitigating risk or maintaining the system state to be considered in the simulation. In this research, we review the cognitive architecture model, task analysis approach, and human reliability analysis in the context of characterizing humans in electric grid cascading failure analysis. Recommendations for an operator modeling method are made to address the scalability.