Life at risk – an empirical investigation of the design of workplaces in control rooms

Control rooms for supervising traffic or emergency situations are increasingly introduced in companies and other governmental organisations. Employees of safety-critical workplaces have to deal with a large amount of problems every day: Quick decision-making, coping with an overload of information and stress are the most important. Designing appropriate workplaces for employees in such organisations is essential. The following paper describes the results of an investigation in two companies with control rooms. Results indicate that the systems deployed in such control rooms support the operators efficiently. Stress is a more important influencing factor. We could not find any significant gender effects concerning the design of workplaces in control rooms.