Context-dependent ATC complexity metric

Context-dependent ATC complexity metric

Mercado Velasco, G.A.
Borst, C.

Aerospace Engineering

Control and Operations

2015-12-31

Several studies have investigated Air Traffic Control (ATC) complexity metrics in a search for a metric that could best capture workload. These studies have shown how daunting the search for a universal workload metric (one that could be applied in different contexts: sectors, traffic patterns, controllers, or ATC tasks) can be. We propose that complexity metrics should be tailor made to the task they were meant to be used for, and focus in the elicitation of parameters that could best capture complexity of the task at hand. For the ATC task of rerouting aircraft a selection of relevant context parameters was made, and based on these a new complexity metric called SSD Composite is proposed. The metric is based on the Solution Space Diagram (SSD) concept. As a pilot study, a low fidelity simulation in which ATM experts operated as controllers and provided self assessments of workload was conducted. Data obtained from the simulation runs was used to compare traditional metrics (Traffic Load and NASA/FAA’s Dynamic Density) against the SSD Composite metric by means of mixed-effects linear regressions. Results showed that SSD-based metrics were much less sensitive to sector or traffic pattern effects and that the amount of observed workload variation accounted for by the SSD Composite fixed effects was higher than that of the Dynamic Density metric.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:60428bab-62f3-42be-b4d3-513f121d1f84

CEAS

978-1-906913-20-5

CEAS 2015, paper no. 142. 5th CEAS Air and Space Conference "Challenges in European Aerospace", Delft, The Netherlands, 7-11 September 2015

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2015 The Author(s) · This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY)