The Impact of Mind‐Wandering on Driller's Situation Awareness in Drilling Operations: Based on SAGAT and EEG

ABSTRACT In the high‐risk environment of drilling operations, mind‐wandering is a significant contributor to unsafe behavior and reduced safety performance. Despite its critical impact, few studies have focused on the cognitive characteristics of mind‐wandering and its influence on situation awareness (SA). This study sought to bridge the research divide by utilizing electroencephalography (EEG) to explore the link between mind‐wandering and brain activity, with the objective of establishing an objective means to monitor drillers’ mind‐wandering. Utilizing the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) in a simulated drilling monitoring task, we compared the states of 50 natural gas drillers before and after their shifts. Brainwave data were recorded and categorized into pre‐shift and post‐shift groups. Our analysis revealed a significant increase in mind‐wandering post‐shift, coupled with a notable decline in SA. This effect was especially pronounced during complex tasks, such as gas kick simulation videos, where response times increased and delta and alpha band power in the frontal lobes significantly rose. These findings suggest that mind‐wandering adversely affects SA, particularly in complex task scenarios. The identified neural indicators offer objective measures of drillers’ cognitive states and can inform attention training and fatigue management strategies. By providing safety managers with real‐time insights into workers’ attention, mind‐wandering detection can help mitigate errors and enhance operational safety in high‐risk environments.