Alicia Fernandes

Collaborative Airport Traffic System (CATS) to Evaluate Design Requirements for an Airport Surface Departure Management System

Airport surface delays can impact operational costs, environmental emissions, and passenger satisfaction. Departure metering is one alternative approach to airport surface departure management intended to better manage such delays and associated costs. We introduce a simulation environment that can be used to explore human factors issues in the design of such procedures. This includes support for a novel role, the Departure Reservoir Coordinator, responsible for managing the metering procedure, a distributed adaptive planning task. Support for such a novel role can be explored in the Collaborative Airport Traffic System (CATS) simulation environment using prototype information displays, user interaction designs, and a capability for study participants to monitor the impacts of their actions on airport performance in real time. We intend to demonstrate the CATS simulation test bed that facilitates such studies in an effort to better understand human factors requirements for the design of collaborative airport surface departure procedures.

Supporting distributed management of the airport surface

In this report, a simulation system called the Collaborative Airport Traffic System (CATS) was used as a testbed to study human factors issues that arise in the design of a departure metering program [1-11] to manage the inventory delivered to the spots at an airport over time. The focus of this particular study was on procedures, functional requirements, information requirements and interface design concepts for supporting collaboration [12-19] between ARTCC and TRACON TMCs and the Departure Reservoir Coordinator (DRC) responsible for managing a departure metering program during a convective weather scenario.

Airport surface management as a distributed supervisory control task

This paper outlines design concepts that approach airport surface management as a distributed supervisory control system. It emphasizes the need to both distribute the management tasks among a number of different Stakeholders and to support supervisory control by human operators at different levels of abstraction in order to deal with the full range of relevant scenarios and distributed tasks. More specifically, the discussion uses a concrete scenario to describe conceptual solutions to support more effective supervisory control, and illustrates design concepts consistent with these conceptual solutions.

Leveraging new data exchange capabilities to improve trajectory predictions

The Advanced Trajectory Modeling project is studying how new data exchange capabilities can improve the trajectory models used by ground and aircraft automation systems. More accurate models support both Performance Based Navigation (PBN) and Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) concepts. The project has identified various aircraft intent and state data elements available from aircraft and Flight Management Systems (FMS) that could be downlinked to ground automation systems. These data are extracted from onboard avionics systems, and downlinked to ground automation systems, using technologies that are rapidly being adopted. Once downloaded, the data are used in advanced trajectory models to support Trajectory Based Operations (TBO). We are implementing these aircraft-derived data elements and trajectory model improvements in an exploratory simulation study to assess the capability for different aircraft types with different equipment capabilities to provide the data, and for ground automation systems to make use of the data to improve trajectory model accuracy. Our approach, using actual systems, provides both an initial assessment of feasibility and anticipated performance benefits. This paper provides background on the project and describes project progress to date.

Key performance issues in Surface Collaborative Decision Making

Surface Collaborative Decision-Making (SCDM) is a process for data exchange to improve the efficient movement of arrivals and departures on and near the airport surface. The Surface CDM Concept of Operations (the ConOps) describes a vision for data exchange as well as a process for metering the flow of departures entering the movement area in order to reduce the need for physical departure queues [1]. This departure metering capability is known as Departure Reservoir Management (DRM). Under the DRM concept, flight operators provide and maintain an updated Earliest Off-Block Time (EOBT) for each flight indicating when the operator expects the flight to be ready to push back from the gate. The DRM assigns each flight a Target Movement Area entry Time (TMAT) when departure metering is in effect. The DRM selects the timing of the TMATs to maintain a queue at the end of each departure runway of the Target Queue Length (measured in aircraft) whenever there is sufficient demand. If the demand and capacity of each runway are as forecast, and taxi-out and related processes occur as predicted, a queue of the Target Queue Length (measured in aircraft) will be maintained. The DRM capability is expected to be implemented at several airports in 2015 as part of the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAAs) Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). When the information provided to DRM contains inaccuracies, maintenance of the target queue length may be compromised. In response to updates in poor information, DRM may re-adjust TMATs in an attempt to maintain the desired queue. Updates to TMATs present challenges to the flight operators who attempt to orchestrate aircraft loading, gate operations, passenger communications, crew times, and a variety of other factors in order to hit their assigned TMATs. A variety of controls is envisioned in the ConOps to allow the Departure Reservoir Coordinator (DRC) to encourage TMAT stability while maintaining the desired queue lengths. In this paper we discuss the Surface CDM Simulation, a simulation model of airport performance that can be achieved under DRM as described in the Surface CDM Concept of Operations, as well as results and insights gained from the model. We show that the concept can work very well when provided with accurate, timely information from operators, but that inaccurate information can lead to undesirable outcomes. We also find that the different TMAT stability controls provided in the ConOps are of varying effectiveness. We expect these results to be useful to future operators of Surface CDM DRM capabilities, to the designers of tools enabling Surface CDM, and to developers focused on future refinements of the Surface CDM Concept of Operations.

Applying Cognitive Engineering Principles to Allocation of Roles and Responsibilities for a Future Air Traffic Management Concept

NASA’s Management by Trajectory (MBT) concept will improve trajectory predictability by providing methods to keep aircraft on negotiated trajectories; however, the concept impacts roles and responsibilities. Most notably, MBT envisions a different distribution of responsibilities between the Radar-side and Data-side (herein called the negotiating) controllers. Cognitive engineering provides a rich history of research into understanding the roles that humans and automation play in complex systems and some principles for system design. This paper briefly summarizes this literature, focusing on principles underlying the proposed allocation of responsibilities in MBT and the source of automation and information requirements.

Advanced Trajectory Modeling: Stakeholder Needs and Expectations:

Advanced air traffic control techniques require accurate predictions of aircraft trajectories. Such predictions rely on complex aircraft parameters which typically are unknown and must be estimated. These estimates can be improved with aircraft-to-ground data exchange methods. The Advanced Trajectory Modeling project is exploring such methods, and how they can improve the aircraft data available to the air traffic control trajectory models used by controller and traffic management decision support tools. The project has identified aircraft data, including current state and intent, which could be downlinked to ground automation systems. The project is exploring emerging technologies onboard the aircraft—such as Internet Protocol Data Link, Aircraft Interface Devices, and Electronic Flight Bags—that could be used to extract and downlink these data to ground automation systems. The project is evaluating advanced trajectory models to enable future synchronization of various ground automation trajectory models with aircraft-generated models to support Trajectory Based Operations, an effort that affects a wide range of stakeholders. Here we use a two-phase stakeholder engagement approach to insure the feasibility of the proposed concept.

Airport surface management strategies to balance throughput, taxi times and predictability in dynamic weather scenarios

New approaches to airport surface management are being developed to support a number of different objectives, ranging from reduced environmental impacts, to increases in throughput during convective weather events, to improved predictability and flexibility for flight operators [1]. To be effective, however, they need to support the coordination of work across the controllers in the airport Tower and traffic managers in the Tower, TRACON and ARTCC, as well as ramp controllers, dispatchers, air traffic control coordinators and pilots working for the flight operators [2, 3]. These new approaches must also support coordination with staff and contractors working for the airport operator [4]. This paper focuses on the need to coordinate across three of these groups, the traffic managers responsible for managing airspace constraints in the ARTCC and/or TRACON, the traffic managers responsible for coordinating airport surface queuing strategies, and the Departure Reservoir Coordinator (DRC), who is responsible for overseeing surface departure metering programs that manage the inventory at the spots.

Identifying Support Requirements for Airport Departure Management

Airport departure demand that exceeds capacity can lead to longer departure queues than necessary. Departure metering is one approach to managing the flow of aircraft to the departure queue so as to build an appropriate inventory of departures on the surface. The Departure Reservoir Coordinator (DRC) is an envisioned role that will be responsible for managing a departure metering procedure. This paper describes a functional analysis of the DRC role and requirements for supporting a person or team in that role that were derived from the functional analysis. Results of the functional analysis were used to develop display concepts that were evaluated by air traffic controllers.