Large Reasoning Models for Abnormal Situation Management
Automation runs safety-critical processes well inside their design envelope. Abnormal situations still fall to human operators, and their mismanagement is a leading contributor to process-safety incidents. Full autonomy in other domains usually leans on a safe stop. A chemical plant does not have that recourse because stopping is itself a hazardous and expensive operation. This project asks whether a general-purpose large reasoning model (LRM), with no task-specific training and only the information available to an operator, can manage abnormal situations at run time, provided it acts through an interface that cannot express an unsafe command. ...