Active Supervision in a Remote Tower Center: Rethinking of a New Position in the ATC Domain

Abstract

Air Traffic Control Officers are the most valuable resource in the Air Traffic Control Domain. They devote their full capacities into safe and efficient traffic control. The Remote Tower Center is the next step to use this resource as efficient as possible, optimizing the existing methodologies and procedures. The initial concept for the Remote Tower Center contains a supervisor. Therefore, this paper focusses on the supervisor and how the supervisor workplace is defined as a coordinating and support position for all Multiple Remote Tower Modules in the center. Based on the existing concept of multiple remote tower operations and the supervisor workplace, two research questions were proposed to analyze the supervisor working position in combination with the multiple remote tower workplaces. A real time simulation study was conducted and a total of 15 air traffic control officers from two air navigation service providers participated. Due to the difficulty of comparing two different workplaces, the data analysis is based on descriptive data collected from the questionnaires. The study analyzed the application and handling of use cases as a reference for realistic task descriptions during a multi workplace real time simulation. The results show that the selected use cases represent the task of the supervisor and can help to validate the workplace. This study also shows the different perceptions of task handling within the remote tower center.

Gaze Movements of Helicopter Pilots during Real and Simulated Take-Off and Landing Maneuvers

“…The Cooper-Harper Scale built the basis for several rating scales. Since its development, the scale was adapted to be used in multiple similar task environments, e.g., UAV control [27,28] or air traffic control [29,30]. Hodge et al [31] adapted the Cooper-Harper Scale to evaluate a pilot's perception of motion cues.…”

Assistant Based Speech Recognition Support for Air Traffic Controllers in a Multiple Remote Tower Environment

“…The research went on to investigate the changes in monitoring tasks and drafting multimodal interaction to support human operators at the controller working position (CWP) [23]. The latest research concentrated on workload assessment [24], operational feasibility and safety [25], as well as a supervisor position [26]. With fostering the technology maturity, questions regarding standardization with the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) guidelines have been developed [21].…”