Maria Freese

Between Game and Reality: Using Serious Games to Analyze Complex Interaction Processes in Air Traffic Management

In 2010 the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull paralyzed a large part of the European air traffic. Results were massive restrictions in the European and intercontinental air traffic. Even after canceling the aircraft grounding, airport operators, airlines, air traffic controllers, and ground handlers had to deal with the situation that the aircraft and crews were not in the places where they should have been for the correct execution of the flight plan. To be able to guarantee the most efficient air traffic, the relevant stakeholders had to cooperate. Divergent goals and interests can significantly affect a solution. Therefore this cooperative coordination is difficult. It is visible that the process of decision-making, especially in the context of air traffic management (ATM), must be investigated. Human interactions during negotiations and human performance in planning activities should be analyzed. These aspects are difficult to measure with conventional methods of real- or fast-time simulations. Serious gaming is a new method in this research field to validate complex operational concepts in the ATM field. For this a paper-based multiplayer serious game, called Total Airport Management Simulation, was developed. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the further development of this paper-based version. In the first section, the paper-based serious game with its main ideas is presented. Based on conducted tests of the serious game, requirements for the digital prototype were deduced. In the later part of this paper, the digital prototype with some new elements will be introduced. In summary using serious games is one possibility to analyze complex interaction processes in ATM.

Serious Gaming in Airport Management: Transformation from a Validation Tool to a Learning Environment

Traditional methods to model airport management for e.g. research or training are primarily simulations. These methods lack the ability to model social behavior in collaborative decision making. Serious gaming is an approach to fill this gap. Therefore, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) introduced the serious game D-CITE for research purpose. This paper describes its advancement to a training tool and the results of a first training session with different airport stakeholders. Their feedback emphasizes the importance of a strong communication culture.

Attitude measurement with board games in transportation nodes

Transportation systems are complex yet vital infrastructures. Different stakeholders have to work together to guarantee the most efficient traffic of humans and goods. Challenges that stakeholders face in such infrastructure systems, like divergent interests and attitudes, make it hard to predict behaviour. To understand the complex systems including the behaviour of the stakeholders, it is relevant to model decision-making processes. For this reason, simulation games were developed. The present article focuses on two different case studies. Both are studies in which board games were used. After explaining each case study, a comparative section follows to give an overview about advantages and disadvantages of the use of board games in the transportation sector.

Addressing Challenges of Planning in Multimodal Transportation Nodes with Simulation Games

Global transportation knows many different modalities – goods arrive from faraway places by ship, plane, railway, or truck. Airports and seaports both represent important nodes within the global transportation network. Both show distinct characteristics, but also similarities when it comes to challenges like required flexibility, robustness, reliability and situational awareness of the stakeholders involved. In this article, we introduce two different simulation games addressing some of these challenges in two complex transportation nodes and discuss the qualitative results of user tests with the games. Within a comparative section, we show how simulation games can be used to address the challenges of multimodal transportation.