Ergonomic design of a railway traffic control room: A Serbian experience

摘要

The aim of the research presented in this paper is to perform an ergonomic evaluation of compatibility between control desk, display panel, and their control devices with operators' capabilities in the process of railway traffic control. This paper covers the application of ergonomic criteria for designing the control room and its main elements, functional characteristics of operators, and the influence of illumination on operator's work efficiency. The paper also introduces methodologies for anthropometric and kinesiological analysis of operators, ergonomic analysis of control desk and display panel, and analysis of illumination in the Railway Traffic Control Room in Nis, Serbia. The research also includes basic statistical parameters for body measures of operators, configuration, and dimension of control desk as a unit, ergonomic analysis of control desk buttons, ergonomic analysis of display panel and its elements, parameters for illumination level of control room, control desk and display panel, and uniformity of illumination and brightness. To establish a link between these research and cognitive demands, methods of cognitive analysis of control and management activities in control room and decision making in abnormal situation by using an operator's stress model are presented. The importance of this approach is that ergonomic assessment of current condition will determine the inadequate design and the ergonomic approach to be used in the implementation of the analysed control room. The results given in this paper enable the beginning of reconstruction and design of new elements in the control room, which will lead to abettor optimized control of railway traffic.