Develop a Comprehensive Method to Evaluate the Mental Workload of Ship Operators

Abstract

Mental workload has become an important factor affecting the human error of ship operators. Controlling the mental workload of operators within a reasonable range can reduce human errors. The purpose of this study is to develop an evaluation method to evaluate the ship operator’s mental workload. First, the evaluation indices system was constructed according to three types of mental workload measurements. Second, the criteria importance though intercrieria correlation (CRITIC) method and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method were used to determine the relative weight of each index. Finally, the fuzzy theory was used to calculate ship operator’s mental workload. The experiment results indicated that subjective workload assessment technique, physiological measurement (eye response), and error rate can be integrated into the comprehensive evaluation method to assess the mental workload of ship operators. Thus, this method can be used to comprehensively evaluate the mental workload level and improve the reliability of the assessment results.