Control Room of the Future Research

This work in energy control rooms spans from 2019 to present (funded into 2027). We are looking for more collaborations to expand our research and amplify the impact of our research beyond energy to all types of control rooms.

Cognitive Load in Control Rooms, 2019-2020

Partnering with AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) we focused on understanding congnitive load in energy control rooms. This work involved eye tracking and heart rate monitoring.

Afzal et al (2022), Cognitive Load in Energy Network Control Rooms: Recommendations for Future Designs, Frontiers of Psychology Journal 2022, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.812677

Visual Eye Tracking Analysis Software, 2020-2022

During the above work, we realised the analysis of eye tracking data is not easy. So we developed some software to impove this. We focus on our above control room case study in the following publication.

Goodwin et al. (2022), VETA: Visual Eye-Tracking Analytics for the Exploration of Gaze Patterns and Behaviours, Visual Informatics, Vol. 6, Iss. 2, Pages 1-13, ISSN 2468-502X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visinf.2022.02.004

This continued into the opensource Gazealytics software

Human-Centred Information Visualisation for Improved Situational Awareness and Critical Decision Making in Energy Control Rooms, 2025-2026

Funded by CSIRO, Stage (4)5 AR-PST, we focus on human-centred approach to understand interface and application use. This research was carred out in partnership with AEMO

We identify 7 painpoints, 5 design vision principles, 10(+ 1 interim) recommendations and 25 guidelines for best practice for visual data communication.

Final report and paper pending publication.

ACRNA Conference: Designing the Control Room of the Future Workshop, 2026

Repeating a workshop designed for AEMO, we ran the same workshop for control room of the future for operators across multiple sectors. This included breaking into tables by 15 topics (including energy transmission, water, fire and rescue, ergonimics and human factors and more).

Results are pending publication.

Innovation of Energy Network Diagrams, 2023-2027

Funded by a Zema Scholarship (AEMO), PhD student Merry Haong is focusing on innovating energy network diagrams. This continued work explores changing and morphing the network design depending on the task at hand.

The recent paper includes observations at AEMO control rooms:

Hoang et al. (2026) How Do Operators Use Network Diagrams? Characterising Visualisation Tasks in an Energy Control Room. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26) ACM, NY,NY, USA, Article 1150, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791442

This builds on her prior Masters research exploring the benefit of geography in energy network diagrams.

Hoang et al, (2023) Exploring the Benefits of Geography on Power Network Diagrams, Workshop on Energy Data Visualization (EnergyVis), Melbourne, Australia, 2023, pp. 6-10, doi: 10.1109/EnergyVis60781.2023.00008

Intelligent context-aware single-line diagrams for integrated energy control rooms for effective operator decision-making and increased situational awareness, 2026-2027

Funded by CSIRO, Stage 6 AR-PST, we focus on human-centred approach to innovating and integrating information into the single line diagram. Further information July 2026+

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