Halden Research Reactor: Engineering Systems Design Research in the Man-Technology-Organization Work Programme

Project Duration: 2018-2020

Project Participants: Anja Maier, Igor Kozine, Robert Taylor, Mary Ann Lundteigen, Josef Oehmen, Jingyue Li, Emil Andersen, Nelson Carreras Guzman, Jin Zhang, Christos Chronopoulos, Balaji Kalluri Mallikarjuna, Sebastiano Piccolo

During the past three years, our team of researchers at DTU Engineering Systems Design has collaborated with the Halden Reactor Project within the Man Technology Organisation (MTO) part of the work programme 2018-2020, with a particular focus on visual attention and decision making and systems safety and security risk management. Our team of researchers has conducted various research activities, including:

SRA Nordic Conference 2019: Risk Management for Innovation

On 7-8 November 2019, Igor Kozine and the DTU Engineering Systems RiskLab coordinated the 5th Society for Risk Analysis Nordic Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. This conference brought together a community of experts in safety and risk management in the Nordic countries and addressed the topic of Risk Management for Innovation. Researchers from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) located in Halden participated in this conference and co-authored publications with researchers from DTU [1], [2], [4]. Namely, Principal Scientist Sizarta Sarshar and Senior Research Scientist John Eidar Simensen from IFE had an active role in these collaborations.

Development and validation of safety and security analysis methods

In a Ph.D. project conducted by Nelson H. Carreras Guzman, a novel safety and security analysis method to protect cyber-physical systems was developed, tested, and validated [16]. This method is coined the Uncontrolled Flows of Information and Energy (UFoI-E) method [3], [7]. This project was supervised by Igor Kozine, Mary Ann Lundteigen, Robert Taylor, and Josef Oehmen.

 In a special collaboration with the Halden Project, in one research paper, we tested the UFoI-E method in the safety and security analysis of the Halden Safety Fan Enclave [12]. Bjørn Axel Gran and André A. Hauge from IFE kindly provided the system specifications of the system under analysis. Taylor et al. [2] also used the data from the Halden Safety Fan Enclave as a case study for validation of various risk identification methods.

In a connected Ph.D. project conducted by Jin Zhang, the robustness of safety-critical control software based on of deep neural networks (DNN) is being investigated. After performing a systematic review on the state-of-the-art of testing and verification approaches for DNN robustness [9],  we propose a novel metric named CriticalGap to measure DNN robustness. This measure can guide software developers to design a DNN model with an appropriate robustness level. Jingyue Li, Igor Kozine, Robert Taylor, and Josef Oehmen are supervising this project.

Balancing smartness and robustness of cyber-physical systems

A parallel field of contribution focused on balancing smartness and robustness characteristics of novel cyber-physical systems. Chronopoulos and Kozine [4]  provided a novel framework to assess the smartness of cyber-physical systems in terms of degree system integration, degree of cooperative control, real-time feedback control, and level of automation. Kalluri et al. [8] applied this framework to the urban environment, illustrating the connection between building design and the smartness of digital infrastructures. Furthermore, Chronopoulos and Carreras Guzman [5] conducted a case study to explore the relationship between smartness and system robustness in the aviation sector. They analyzed the fatal Boeing 737 MAX accidents using the smartness framework and proposed further areas of application in industrial systems and autonomous vehicles.

Visual attention and human decision-making in emergency scenarios

In a Ph.D. project conducted by Emil Andersen, design improvements for emergency scenarios were proposed and tested in realistic emergency simulations [17]. The studies were founded in cognitive theory and attention theory and were applied to relevant contexts, aiming at the improvement of the response to complex emergency scenarios. Particularly, a full-scale simulation study of a nuclear power plant emergency was conducted in collaboration with IFE in Halden. In this study, active nuclear control room operators worked in realistic emergency scenarios at the Halden Man-Machine Laboratory (HAMMLAB). The effects of heuristics and biases on decision-making in this emergency scenario were tested, contributing to the better design of emergency procedures and to the reduction of biases in decision-making. In the context of this project, two Halden Reports were published [14], [15] as well as 4 peer-reviewed conference- and 2 journal publications [10], [11]. Professor Anja Maier and Senior Researcher Igor Kozine from DTU supervised this project, together with Senior Researcher Stine Strand, IFE, Halden.

Selected Project Publications

[1]          N. H. Carreras Guzman and I. Kozine, “When major accidents are no longer accidental: The emergence of destructive cyber-attacks,” in 5th Society for Risk Analysis Nordic Conference, 2019.

[2]          J. R. Taylor, C. Chronopoulos, S. Piccolo, S. Sarshar, and J. E. Simensen, “In Depth Hazards and Security Analysis for an Industrial Test Enclave for Methods Testing and Validation,” in 5th Society for Risk Analysis Nordic Conference, 2019.

[3]          N. H. Carreras Guzman, D. K. M. Kufoalor, I. Kozine, and M. A. Lundteigen, “Combined safety and security risk analysis using the UFoI-E method : A case study of an autonomous surface vessel,” in Proceedings of the 29th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2019), 2019, pp. 4099–4106.

[4]          C. Chronopoulos and I. Kozine, “Conceptualising smartness of cyber-physical systems,” in 5th Society for Risk Analysis Nordic Conference, 2019.

[5]          C. Chronopoulos and N. H. Carreras Guzman, “Is Smartness Risky? A Framework to Evaluate Smartness in Cyber-Physical Systems,” in Proceedings of the 30th European Safety and Reliability Conference and the 15th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management Conference, 2020.

[6]          A. Andersen, Emil, Kozin, Igor, & Maier, “Biased Decision Making in Realistic Extra-Procedural Nuclear Control Room Sce-narios,” in Design Computing and Cognition DCC’18, 2018, pp. 601–620.

[7]          N. H. Carreras Guzman, M. Wied, I. Kozine, and M. A. Lundteigen, “Conceptualizing the key features of cyber-physical systems in a multi-layered representation for safety and security analysis,” Syst. Eng., no. 23, pp. 189–210, 2020.

[8]          B. Kalluri, C. Chronopoulos, and I. Kozine, “The concept of smartness in cyber – physical systems and connection to urban environment,” Annu. Rev. Control, 2020.

[9]          J. Zhang and J. Li, “Testing and verification of neural-network-based safety-critical control software: A systematic literature review,” Inf. Softw. Technol., vol. 123, 2020.

[10]        E. Andersen and A. Maier, “The attentional guidance of individual colours in increasingly complex dis-plays,” Appl. Ergon., vol. 81, no. 102885, 2019.

[11]        E. Andersen, K. Goucher-Lambert, J. Cagan, and A. Maier, “Attention Affordances: Applying Attention Theory to the Design of Complex Visual Interfaces,” J. Exp. Psychol. Appl., 2021.

[12]        N. H. Carreras Guzman, I. Kozine, and M. A. Lundteigen, “An integrated safety and security analysis for cyber-physical harm scenarios (Manuscript under review),” Saf. Sci., 2020.

[13]        N. H. Carreras Guzman, J. Zhang, J. Xie, and J. A. Glomsrud, “A comparative study of STPA-Extension and the UFoI-E method for safety and security co-analysis (Manuscript under review),” Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., 2020.

[14]        E. Andersen, I. Kozine, A. Maier, and S. Massaiu, “Decision-making in control room emergencies: A re-analysis of a HAMMLAB experiment in the ‘heuristics and biases’ paradigm.” Submitted Work Report to the OECD Halden Reactor Project, 2018.

[15]        E. Andersen and A. Maier, “Biased Information Search with Missing or Unreliable Information.” Submitted Work Report to the OECD Halden Reactor Project, 2018.

[16]        N. H. Carreras Guzman, “Identification of safety and security cascading risks in cyber-physical systems,” PhD thesis (Under review). Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 2020.

[17]        E. Andersen, “Improving Visual Information Search in Emergencies through Using Cognitive Theory in Design,” Technical University of Denmark (DTU), 2019.