Air Traffic Controllers' Situation Awareness and Workload under Dynamic Air Traffic Situations

Abstract

As air-traffic control (ATC) services are provided for the purpose of achieving flight safety and efficient aircraft operations, the role of air-traffic controllers in the aviation system is vital. Since the accident rates caused by human error have been increasing, major aviation institutes worldwide are actively conducting research on the human factors affecting controllers. Among human factors in aviation, situation awareness (SA) and workload have been at the center of many research activities for years. Also, many people have expressed an interest in how these two constructs relate to each other. In this article, the relations between controllers' SA and workload were explored under different taskload conditions. An experiment that included ATC simulation to measure the controller's SA and workload at various air-traffic situations was conducted. Based on the results of this study, the measures to keep the controller's SA and workload at a manageable level and the effective training programs can be explored.

Effects of a modified shift work organization and traffic load on air traffic controllers’ sleep and alertness during work and non-work activities

“…Such interferences have been reported in relation with health complaints (Cascino and Mélan, 2019) and stress the interest of considering in future shiftwork studies measures that provide information about participants' fitness outside working hours. Moreover, the reported sleep duration did not change according to traffic load, in contrast to the results reported in other studies (Åkerstedt et al, 2002;Corver et al, 2016;Nealley and Gawron, 2015;Lee et al, 2012).…”

“…Hence, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of both shift-schedule arrangements and traffic load on ATCOs' sleep, fatigue and alertness. A significant effect of traffic load was expected, with increased sleep length and alertness and reduced fatigue for lower aircraft traffic (Åkerstedt et al, 2002;Corver et al, 2016;Nealley and Gawron, 2015;Lee et al, 2012). We hypothesized that the beneficial effect would be most marked for morning shifts, as reduced traffic may counterbalance the well-known deleterious effects associated with early morning shift beginning (Tucker et al, 1998).…”

“…Combinations of specific shift work features may further enhance the conflict of work schedules with the operators' biological clock, and deteriorate sleep, performance and health (van de Ven et al, 2016). This has been reported for instance for the combined influence of circadian and time-on-task factors (Folkard and Tucker, 2003), low levels of workload and lack of alertness on night shifts (Lee et al, 2012), consecutive night shifts (Folkard and Tucker, 2003;Garde et al, 2020), backward-compared to forward-rotating shift systems (Knauth and Hornberger, 2003;Sallinen and Kecklund, 2010), and slow versus fast shift rotations (Juda et al, 2013). Further, ATCOs under 8-h alternate shifts, rather than 6-h rotational shifts showed lower scores for quality of life, and less sleep time on working days, which characterizes inadequate shiftwork for this population (Sonati, et al, 2015).…”

Using Multimodal Data to Predict Surgeon Situation Awareness

“…Endsley [29] questions the design of the SART questionnaire, which would evaluate cognitive processes close to MW. Another hypothesis supported by some authors [22,30,31] is that a high but reasonable MW would be necessary to achieve a high level of SA. Future research could attempt to test our model using more appropriate measurement methods for assessment in a real surgical context.…”

Assessment of Situation Awareness during Robotic Surgery using Multimodal Data

“…The theoretical link between MW and SA has been discussed for several decades. Endsley [8] posits that SA and MW are two independent concepts, while others [17,23] suggest that the two concepts are interdependent, especially when MW is high. Various researchers have tested the relationships that may exist between these two notions [1,13,18,41], and a meta-analysis [40] concluded that the MW-SA relationship varies depending on the context.…”