ABSTRACT
Sophisticated cyber-physical threats are often complex and unpredictable, making them difficult for grid operators to accurately detect and quickly mitigate. Responding to these threats demands cognitive flexibility, where operators can adapt behavior and decision-making in response to changing circumstances beyond routine operating conditions. This paper investigates cognitive flexibility and operator performance through a two-stage experimental study on cyber-physical threats. Three hypotheses were proposed: (1) whether cyber-attack scenarios, exhibiting task-reversal characteristics, increase operator errors
and solution times; (2) whether physiological measures, such as eye-tracking and skin response metrics, characterize operator performance during cyber-physical events; and (3) whether cyber decision-support tools improve operator performance. These hypotheses were validated on (a) a custom energy management system and (b) a real-time hardware-in-the-loop cyber-power digital twin testbed with 40 participants, including professional power system operators and students with a power systems background.
