Standardized Risk Mitigation Measurement in Extended Reality Environments Utilizing the IEEE Experience API (xAPI) Standard

Recent reports indicate increased organizational appetite and spend in the energy industry in both the areas of operational risk management training and enablement and in extended reality hardware and software, as part of larger automation and digital transformation initiatives. Furthermore, recent advances in immersive technology, along with more dispersed, asynchronous working conditions due to COVID, have resulted in scalable, immersive simulations that more and more closely resemble real world environments. While recent standards have defined JSON syntax appropriate for tracking and measuring human behavior data in generic learning environments (IEEE P9274.1) and in a manner that more closely approximates human behavior in the workplace, as typically tracked in operational risk management systems, no risk-based ontology has yet been defined that more closely crosswalks and correlates data from simulated environment systems to those in operational environments. Thus, the true efficacy of extended reality-based risk mitigation training cannot be fully measured. In this effort, a risk-based ontology and matrix was constructed in accordance with the xAPI standard syntax and allowable extensions and was utilized to transform a subset of historical data from simulated operational risk-based scenarios from the energy industry. Transformed data from this initial subset closely approximated operational risk reporting data and provided insights into human behavior data in simulated environments that can be easily compared and correlated to existing operational excellence and risk mitigation KPIs. Implications for mapping of additional advanced data from simulated environments in larger, more complex datasets, such as eye tracking and biometrics, were also considered and explored.