Future en route air traffic control workstation

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Document Number:
None (published by IEEE)
Publication Date:
01-2004
Authors: Ben Willems

Willems, B. (2004). Future en route air traffic control workstation: Back to basics. In Proceedings of the 23rd AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference (pp. 5.A.3.1-12). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE

Abstract

The expected increase of air traffic by at least 33% by 2015 to 2020 will require more than an evolutionary change from the way air traffic controllers work today in more than an evolutionary manner. One way to do this is to free up individual air traffic controller physical and mental resources. If controllers can apply the increase in available resources to air traffic control, we expect that they will have more capacity to absorb an increase in air traffic. To make these resources available we will use human factors principles to integrate available data and provide that data to controllers in an efficient presentation format. We report on the development of a concept software platform that integrates data obtained from existing automation tools with available National Airspace System (NAS) data. The integration takes place at the Human Computer Interface and attempts to make that interface easy to use by applying human factors principles and leveraging existing air traffic controller expertise. We will discuss why we must present National Airspace Data in an integrated manner. We will also present how we intend to assess if our approach has succeeded in freeing individual air traffic controller resources.