SRATM - Stress Reduction, Safety and Efficiency in Future ATM through Flight Progress Information
Overview
Background & policy context:
As a consequence of the expected doubling in air traffic by the year 2015, coupled with the requirement for safer, more efficient and environment-friendly air traffic management (ATM) systems, demands on air traffic controllers will significantly increase in the future. Therefore new ATM concepts will have to address the effects of new technologies on the stress and strain of operators, while taking into account:
- the different working environments for personnel in different European countries;
- the differences between current ATM systems;
- workload conditions and system malfunctions that vary with traffic volume.
Objectives:
SRATM aimed to measure the stress and strain of air traffic controllers when using air traffic systems with future technology. For that purpose, several real-time simulations implementing future Air Traffic Control (ATC) functionalities were run under an EATCHIP III compliant simulator, using controllers coming from three different countries.
The main objectives were:
- to reach conclusions as to whether a reduction in workload will occur as expected through implementing new ATC functionalities;
- to identify possible weaknesses of new systems, and develop suggestions on how to overcome the problems;
- to establish the form of the relationship between stress/strain and workload/capacity;
- to investigate the influence of potential ATC system malfunctions;
- to examine the interactive effects of system malfunctions and different traffic levels;
- to assess the potential for reducing delays or shortening routes.
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