3 research outputs found
The impact of alerting design on air traffic controllers' response to conflict detection and resolution
Purposes: The research aim is to develop a better design of auditory alerts that can improve air traffic controllers’ situation awareness.
Method: Participants are seventy-seven qualified Air Traffic Controllers. The experiment was conducted in the Air Traffic Control operational rooms of the Irish Aviation Authority at Shannon and Dublin. Participants were advised that the trials were in relation to the COOPANS Air Traffic Control. ANOVA with two between-subject factors (alerting designs and experience levels) were conducted to analyze the ATCO’s response time for three critical events. Bonferroni test was performed for post-hoc analysis on mean differences of response time.
Results: There is a significant difference in ATCO’s response time between acoustic alert and semantic alert across STCA, APW and MSAW. No significant main effect of controllers’ experience on ATCO’s response time for STCA and APW. Also, there is no significant interaction between alerting design and experience level on ATCO’s response time across STCA, APW and MSAW.
Conclusion: The results demonstrated that the acoustic alert deployed within the COOPANS ATM system provides level-1 Situational Awareness to ATCO’s compared with an semantic alert which provides not only level-1 of situational awareness for perceived alerts, but also level-2 and level-3 of situational awareness to assist ATCO understanding of critical events and therefore develop more suitable solutions. Consequently, human-centered design of a semantic alert can significantly speed up ATCO’s response to STCA, and APW. Furthermore, the sematic alert could alleviate expertise differences by promoting quicker response times for both novice and experienced air traffic controllers
The impact of alerting designs on air traffic controller's eye movement patterns and situation awareness
This research investigated controller’ situation awareness by comparing COOPANS’s acoustic alerts with newly designed semantic alerts. The results demonstrate that ATCOs’ visual scan patterns had significant differences between acoustic and semantic designs. ATCOs established different eye movement patterns on fixations number, fixation duration and saccade velocity. Effective decision support systems require human-centred design with effective stimuli to direct ATCO’s attention to critical events. It is necessary to provide ATCOs with specific alerting information to reflect the nature of of the critical situation in order to minimize the side-effects of startle and inattentional deafness. Consequently, the design of a semantic alert can significantly reduce ATCOs’ response time, therefore providing valuable extra time in a time-limited situation to formulate and execute resolution strategies in critical air safety events. The findings of this research indicate that the context-specified design of semantic alerts could improve ATCO’s situational awareness and significantly reduce response time in the event of Short Term Conflict Alert activation which alerts to two aircraft having less than the required lateral or vertical separation
Human-centred design for next generation of air traffic management systems.
Designing and deploying air traffic management systems requires an understanding of
cognitive ergonomics, system integration, and human-computer interactions. The aim of
this research is to develop an effective Human-centred design for Air Navigation Services
Providers to permit more effective air traffic controller training and regulations. Therefore,
this research consists of both evaluating human-computer interactions on COOPANS Air
Traffic Management system and multiple remote tower operations. The COOPANS
Alliance is an international cooperation among the air navigation service providers of
Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden with Thales as the industry
supplier. The findings of this project indicate that the context-specified design of semantic
alerts could improve ATCO’s situational awareness and significantly reduce response time
when responding to aircraft conflict resolution alerts. Civil Aviation Authorities, Air
Navigation Service Providers and Air Traffic Management System Providers could all
benefit from the findings of this research with a view to ensuring that Air Traffic Controllers
are provided with the optimal context-specified alerting schemes to increase their
situational awareness during both training and operations. The EU Single European Sky
initiative was introduced to restructure European airspace and propose innovative measures
for air traffic management to achieve the objectives of enhanced cost-efficiency and
improved airspace design and airport capacity whilst simultaneously improving safety
performance. There is potential to save approximately €2.21 million Euro per annum per
installation of remote tower versus traditional control towers. However, ATCO’s visual
attention and monitoring performance can be affected by how information is presented, the
complexity of the information presented, and the operating environment in the remote tower
centre. To achieve resource-efficient and sustainable air navigation services, there is a need
to improve the design of human-computer interactions in multiple remote tower technology
deployment. These must align with high technology-readiness levels, operators’ practices,
industrial developments, and the certification processes of regulators. From a regulatory
perspective the results of this project may contribute to European Aviation Safety Agency
rulemaking activity for future Air Traffic Management Systems. Overall, the results of this
research are in line with the requirements of Single European Sky and facilitate the
harmonisation of European ATM systems.PhD in Transport System