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Making sense of the abstraction hierarchy in the power plant domain

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Abstract

The paper discusses the abstraction hierarchy proposed by Rasmussen [(1986) Information processing and human-machine interaction, North-Holland] for design of human-machine interfaces for supervisory control. The purpose of the abstraction hierarchy is to represent a work domain by multiple levels of means-end and part-whole abstractions. It is argued in the paper that the abstraction hierarchy suffers from both methodological and conceptual problems. A cluster of selected problems are analyzed and illustrated by concrete examples from the power plant domain. It is concluded that the semantics of the means-end levels and their relations are vaguely defined and therefore should be improved by making more precise distinctions. Furthermore, the commitment to a fixed number of levels of means-end abstractions should be abandoned and more attention given to the problem of level identification in the model-building process. It is also pointed out that attempts to clarify the semantics of the abstraction hierarchy will invariably reduce the range of work domains where it can be applied.

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Acknowledgements

The Danish Foundation for Basic Research supported the present work through a contract with the Center for Human-Machine Interaction (CHMI).

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  1. Center for Human-Machine Interaction, Ørsted DTU, Automation, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs., Lyngby, Denmark

    Morten Lind

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  1. Morten Lind
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Correspondence to Morten Lind.

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Lind, M. Making sense of the abstraction hierarchy in the power plant domain. Cogn Tech Work 5, 67–81 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-002-0109-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-002-0109-4

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