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
