HUMAN FACTORS
An ATC architecture that assumes the machines will
handle things until when they are no longer able to and
then people will step in is “bad architecture”
including air traffic control. “We have
achieved safety and are taking it for granted.
We think that safety is built in and we can
just pursue efficiency,” Woods says. The
hard-won success in air safety worldwide
doesn’t ensure future success if the industry
doesn’t stick to systems engineering
discipline and is overcome by time and
financial pressures.
Civil aviation’s remarkable aviation
achievements in reducing accidents and
incidents has set the bar high and may be
held against the industry in the future,
believes Peter Hancock, a noted human
factors researcher at the University of
Central Florida. “The world we live in is
unfair in some ways,” he says.
With drones and air taxis in the wings, the
aviation industry is planning to move
beyond just automation which is “linear and
deterministic”. Hancock believes this may
lead to the situation where there will be
“Autonomy surprise” and raises the question
of whether humans should interfere or “does
the computer know best”.
Remote operations and AI
In air traffic management, Woods sees the
rising tide of air traffic, the impact of
extreme weather events and the advent of
fundamentally new technology creating an
unstable environment. At its heart, ATC
continues to rely primarily on human
cognitive skill and it is not clear how the
fundamental instability created by these
trends is going to affect human performance.
New technology trends in ATC include
remote towers with cameras and software
applications that present images for use in
controlling traffic from a site that can be a
hundred kilometers or more from the
airport. Software applications that rely on
artificial intelligence can process imagery to
provide key information to controllers at the
remote site.
As operational uncertainty rises, the
humans in charge want to be able to
anticipate what is going to happen with, for
example, an unexpected amount of air traffic
or a workload bottleneck. “I’m worried
about sudden spikes in workload,” Woods
20 AIR TRAFFIC TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 2020
says. “We need a mechanism to manage
uncertainty and a mechanism to allow us to
anticipate changing loads and the complexity
of air traffic.”
In a recent discussion with a major air
navigation service provider Woods explored
how controllers adapt to make the system
work when unexpected things happen. “We
have to find a way to mitigate that
uncertainty and manage it,” he says. “When
we evaluate the design of new technology
and implement it we have to understand how
it may create uncertainty.”
It is also necessary to understand the
safety implications of how controllers are
adapting to cope with unexpected situations.
Even if new technology reduces workload
and increases traffic capacity so controllers
can handle a higher load smoothly there will
still be disruptions at times that create spikes
in workload.
Major software outages sometimes occur
in air traffic control. Woods cites an ATM
system malfunction at Dublin Airport,
Ireland in July 2008 that originated in the
David Woods is a leading academic
and researcher in the area of human
factors and flight deck automation