How Do Operators Use Network Diagrams? Characterising Visualisation Tasks in an Energy Control Room

Decision-making in energy control rooms relies on visualising complex, dynamic networks through single-line diagrams (SLDs), yet the tasks these views support remain under-characterised. From a systematic review of 42 papers, we coded 202 tasks using Munzner’s WHY–WHAT–HOW framework and Lee et al.’s graph-task taxonomy. Analysis identified six task themes coalescing into five archetypes: topology exploration using shape/orientation; line-attribute comparison through size/alignment; temporal evolution via animation; alarm triage using colour/luminance; and overview synthesis through coordinated views. Assessment with 42 field tasks from real control room observations demonstrated that the archetypes show coverage, clean boundaries, and distinctive visual channels. Our findings reveal critical needs for semantic zoom, temporal continuity, and adaptive view coordination in control room design. Beyond infrastructure domains, this work highlights fundamental visualisation challenges in representing dynamic topologies, encoding multiple attributes in dense configurations, and managing attention across views. Further study should balance geographic reality with operational clarity.