Impact of Trajectories’ Uncertainty in Existing ATC Complexity Methodologies and Metrics for DAC and FCA SESAR Concepts

et al. 2022

AEAT

Purpose Air traffic controllers (ATCOs) play a fundamental role in the safe, orderly and efficient management of air traffic. In the interests of improving safety, it would be beneficial to know what the workload thresholds are that permit ATCOs to carry out their functions safely and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a simulation platform to be able to validate an affective-cognitive performance methodology based on neurophysiological factors applied to ATCOs, to define the said thresholds. Design/methodology/approach The process followed in setting up the simulation platform is explained, with particular emphasis on the design of the program of exercises. The tools designed to obtain additional information on the actions of ATCOs and how their workload will be evaluated are also explained. Findings To establish the desired methodology, a series of exercises has been designed to be simulated. This paper describes the project development framework and validates it, taking preliminary results as a reference. The validation of the framework justifies further study to extend the preliminary results. Research limitations/implications This paper describes the first part of the project only, i.e. the definition of the problem and a proposed methodology to arrive at a workable solution. Further work will concentrate on carrying out a program of simulations and subsequent detailed analysis of the data obtained, based on the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results presented. Originality/value The methodology will be an important tool from the point of view of safety and the work carried out by ATCOs. This first phase is crucial as it provides a solid foundation for later stages.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How much workload is workload? A human neurophysiological and affective-cognitive performance measurement methodology for ATCOs

Suárez

Valdés

et al. 2022

AEAT

“…Due to this relationship between the sector operation complexity (SOC) and controllers' workload, SOC will have an extraordinary role in air traffic management, e.g., airspace reconfiguration, air traffic flow management, and allocation of the ATC service resources [9]. These reasons place the study of complexity as a topic of great interest [10].…”

Section: Introduction and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic sector characterisation model with the application of machine learning techniques

IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

Comendador

Jurado

et al. 2022

The ATC service has the objective of controlling airspace operations safely and efficiently. This control is becoming more and more difficult due to the increasing complexity of airspace. With the objective of collaborating and facilitating the provision of the control service, FLUJOS project aims to develop a methodology to characterise ATC sectors according to their complexity. This paper shows the first results obtained in this project. A methodology is proposed that first performs a statistical analysis of the data present in the flight plans of individual aircraft. The statistical analysis will be used to estimate the impact of air traffic flows. With this, the complexity of ATC sectors will finally be determined. In addition, a machine learning tool will be added to develop a dynamic methodology. After evaluating the methodology with data from Spanish airspace in 2019, it can be said that the results obtained are logical from an operational point of view, and that they allow a fairly accurate classification of the sectors based on their complexity. However, the proposed methodology is still a preliminary version, so more work will have to be done to add variables to achieve the objective of obtaining an even more accurate and realistic classification.

“…Their role is central to air traffic control (ATC). This can be seen in the large number of projects developed to identify changes in ATC and, in particular, in air traffic controllers, as a consequence of future changes in the air navigation system (as an example, see [1,2]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How much workload is workload? A human neurophysiological and affective - cognitive performance measurement methodology for air traffic controllers

Suárez

Valdés

IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

et al. 2022

Air traffic controllers play an important role in enabling safe, orderly, and efficient flight management within airspace. By the very nature of their work, they must make critical decisions in a time-critical environment. From a safety point of view, it would be of interest to obtain the workload thresholds (upper and lower limits) in order to define a range in which it would be safe and efficient for air traffic controllers to work. This collaboration project between CRIDA and UPM aims to obtain a methodology to define these workload limits, based on experimental affective-cognitive data and neurophysiological parameters of the performance of air traffic controllers. The workload assessment combines objective and subjective approaches. From the objective point of view, electroencephalography and eye-tracking techniques will be employed. In this paper, the first milestones achieved in the project are presented, as well as the simulation platform to be used in the experiment and the simulation-based set of exercises that has been specially designed for this project.