Context enabled decision aids to support the situation awareness and performance of risk engineers carrying out loss prevention surveys

Routine inspection by insurance companies at their clients’ facility, also known as loss prevention survey, help identify the best strategies to minimize damages when there is a high-speed wind event. More specifically, wind vulnerabilities associated with a building are evaluated using a process known as windstorm risk inspection. This routine inspection helps clients reduce the extent of damages caused by high-speed wind events including hurricane and tornado. Risk engineers make use of their subjective and analytical deduction skills to successfully carry out the inspection tasks. In this research the researchers investigated the effect of context-based visualization strategies on situation awareness and their understanding of the situation. The study examined how different types of information contribute towards the three levels of situation awareness. Following a between-subjects study design, 65 participants completed the study. Each session lasted 90–120 min. A checklist based and predictive display-based decision aids were tested and found to be effective in supporting the situation awareness requirements as well as performance of risk engineers. However, the predictive display only helped with certain tasks such as understanding the interaction among different components on the rooftop. For remaining tasks such as perceiving obvious issues like membrane tear, clogged drains and vegetation growth, checklist alone was sufficient. This study helped the understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the decision aids tested. More specifically, these decision aids can improve the mental model of novice risk engineers. Additionally, this study provided insights that could help design training materials for infrastructure inspectors.