A Human-In-The-Loop air traffic control simulation investigated the impact of uncertainties in trajectory predictions on NextGen Trajectory-Based Operations concepts, seeking to understand when the automation would become unacceptable to controllers or when performance targets could no longer be met. Retired air traffic controllers staffed two en route transition sectors, delivering arrival traffic to the northwest corner-post of Atlanta approach control under time-based metering operations. Using trajectory-based decisionsupport tools, the participants worked the traffic under varying levels of wind forecast error and aircraft performance model error, impacting the ground automation's ability to make accurate predictions. Results suggest that the controllers were able to maintain high levels of performance, despite even the highest levels of trajectory prediction errors.

Cyberspace is an increasingly crucial part of everyday living. We have long recognized that defending this space is complex, requiring information integration, and decisions of man and machine to coalesce in a dynamic environment full of shifting priorities. These properties suggest that, as in other domains with similar characteristics, situation awareness (SA) of a human cyber defender is paramount to the quality of decision outcomes in cyber defense. The majority of existing research in cyber situation awareness, centers on information systems and computers, which piece together disparate data. Fused data from multiple sources, for example, is necessary for cyberspace visualization efforts. The judgment for successful cyber SA from this perspective is different from one that is human-centered. In comparison, we rarely assess human cognitive awareness in cyberspace. In part, this reflects a need, based on prior theory, to first define critical elements of information that the human must perceive, work to elucidate how humans combine these elements to comprehend the state of the network, and how together, this awareness helps analysts predict the future state of the network. In other words, although data fusion can provide value by reducing the cognitive load created to piece together disparate sources of information, human awareness of the network (cyber-cognitive situation awareness-CCSA) is perhaps the ultimate intermediary for defense performance. Toward such an understanding, we discuss the results of a cognitive task analysis (CTA) which sought to determine the goals and abstracted elements of awareness that cyber analysts seek in network defense. We present the foundation for a series of planned experiments that establishes CCSA measurement, and baselines the efforts of cyber defenders. Once assessed, we can then begin to consider the help offered by fusion systems, automation of defensive capabilities, and cyber visualizations in a methodologically rigorous manner that has been lacking.

As part of an ongoing research effort on separation assurance and functional allocation in NextGen, a controller-in-the-loop study with ground-based automation was conducted at NASA Ames' Airspace Operations Laboratory in August 2012 to investigate the potential impact of introducing self-separating aircraft in progressively advanced NextGen timeframes. From this larger study, the current exploratory analysis of controller-automation interaction styles focuses on the last and most far-term time frame. Measurements were recorded that firstly verified the continued operational validity of this iteration of the ground-based functional allocation automation concept in forecast traffic densities up to 2x that of current day high altitude en-route sectors. Additionally, with greater levels of fully automated conflict detection and resolution as well as the introduction of intervention functionality, objective and subjective analyses showed a range of passive to active controller-automation interaction styles between the participants. Not only did the controllers work with the automation to meet their safety and capacity goals in the simulated future NextGen timeframe, they did so in different ways and with different attitudes of trust/use of the automation. Taken as a whole, the results showed that the prototyped controller-automation functional allocation framework was very flexible and successful overall.

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