Measurement of Temporal Awareness in Air Traffic Control

Abstract

Temporal awareness, or level 3 situation awareness, is critical to successful control of air traffic, yet the construct remains ill-defined and difficult to measure. This research sought evidence for air traffic controllers' awareness of temporal characteristics of their tasks in data from a high-fidelity system evaluation simulation. Five teams of controllers worked on four scenarios with different traffic load. Several temporal parameters were defined for each task controllers performed during a simulation run and their actions on the tasks were timed relative to them. Controllers showed a strong tendency to prioritize tasks according to a first come, first served principle. This trend persisted as task load increased. Also evident was awareness of the urgency of tasks, as tasks with impending closing of a window of opportunity were performed before tasks that had longer time available before closing of the window.