Air Traffic Management

I have attended a very interesting seminar on the state of things regarding ASAS – Airborne Separation Assistance System – related applications.

The seminar was very interesting and I am sure that a lot of the applications [and from what I could understand in this remit we define application as the grouping of the technology, the functionalities and the procedures to achieve a goal] that are being developed, and which for some will be developed in the short term whilst others are for the longer term, will have a strong impact on AT[C]M and will be of an improvement to the system.

However,  as the title indicates, there is an aspect that I found worrying, which is the grouping of standardisation of specification and procedures together with a deep understanding on the human factor implications that the introduction of such applications will have on the system.

What worries me is that, from what I could indirectly understand during the seminar is that ICAO [there was no official ICAO stand on the issue presented] is severly lagging behind in this area, and is ready to let the systems to be specified, certified and used at local level before it specifies the functionalities, the performance levels and the procedures for use at a global level.

Some during the seminar compared the attitude to ACAS [the standard] and TCAS [the application] where ICAO let the application become operational before it made an attempt to coin the standard.  And this led to results many of us know of including:

• Lack of understanding of the human factor implications
• Procedures which were updated [refined] numerous times as experience was gained, which left many grey areas in how controllers and pilots had to react to the system
• Even though there existed a real need for a safety net such as ACAS, the solution was mainly driven by the technology related stakeholders.

I have already written about the way I perceive these problems in a previous article on ACAS so enough on that, but I am afraid that we are repeating the same mistakes where:

• Those driving the development of the ASAS applications are under estimating the impact they will have on the humans in the ATM system and as a result
• They are not investing sufficient effort [at least it seems so as for example none of the 18 presentations I followed during the seminar considered human factors] on human factors
• There does not seem to be leadership from a functional point of view, and the leadership seems to be industrial and technology driven [There were no presentations from - or considering the viewpoint of - the pilots and controllers who will use the applications]

With the results risking of being similar to the ACAS experience where we have valuable applications but which have serious shortcomings with regard of the understanding of the interaction with the humans who operate them resulting into serious safety problems.

So what can we do about it?

Well the human performance / factors / safety / training community as well as the ATCO and Pilot professional associations need to wake up to this problem.  We need to start getting involved and start lobbying on the issue.

We need to take the position that these applications NEED to be implemented, but they NEED to be implemented with the proper study on how they will interact with the humans in the system.  They need to be developed in harmony with the system including the humans. The role, responsibility, task, cognitive process changes of the human actors need to be well studied and adapted to the birth of these applications.  Adapted and appropriate procedures need to be written and training provided to those who need to make the shift to the new applications.  Recruitment analysis and training for new recruits need to change…

There is a lot to be done, but it can be done.

As for me, this is the second time I am writing on ASAS, I have also written on other occasions on the future of ATC. I will also continue to influence in as much as I can, from my position for others to start acting on this…

Only time will tell [and hopefully it doesn't] if the same mistake as with ACAS/TCAS is repeated…

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One of the techniques which aims at providing gains in efficiencies in the future will be ASAS.

Needless to say that introducing airborne separation will be a major evolution in air traffic control.

A lot of R&D is being carried out at the moment to identified the tools and procedures which will be necessary to provide sufficient situational awareness to pilots [who at the present point in time the little they have translates into what is presented to them via TCAS and their radio] and to controllers [who at present control all the aircraft which are active in their airspace].

One of the main future challenges will be to train both controllers and pilots in the direct and indirect skill sets that they will need to accommodate ASAS.

Having 100% control of your airspace can be very challenging, especially in busy and/or complex traffic situations, however having 80% control of the same situations will probably be even more challenging.  The skill to accommodate a mixed mode of aircraft using ASAS and others which don’t will need to be learned, and even though I am sure that future controllers will be assisted by state of the art technology to do so, it will still be a challenge.

This will be part of the future paradigm shift that controllers have to make:  they need to be more flexible and accept more variation.  This means that even from very early future controllers need to be trained in a different way.  Probably they have to be also selected on different criteria.

This in turn means that the trainers, and those specifying training objectives need to understand and appreciate the new challenges and introduce them into training at the right time.  Those delivering training need to be kept enough in the loop to be able to provide advice to the new students. All this will not happen overnight, however knowing how long it takes to initiate, discuss, propose and approve training specifications and then develop and deliver training material, I think now is right about time to start.

I think that the SESAR development phase should take this work, and other related to it which will change the ATC tasks, on board as part of the Human Performance roadmap: Adapting Selection, Training and Licensing to enable the achievement of the ATM target concept.

As for the pilots, I think that similar work needs to be done.  The principle of ‘aviate, navigate and communicate will have to be changed to aviate, separate, navigate [or navigate, separate, depending form where you see it] communicate.

So, interesting times ahead, but it is better if we start preparing now to enjoy it later!

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