MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINENATIONAL AVIATION UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF AIRNAVIGATION AIR NAVIGATION SYSTEMS DEPARTMENT

MASTER’S DEGREE THESIS

Theme:

“Methods of situational awareness enhancement of an air traffic controller”

“Методи вдосконалення ситуаційної обізнаності авіадиспетчера”

Performed by: Dolmatova D.M.

Supervisor: Luppo O.Ye.

Investigation object – professional activity of an air traffic controller;

Investigation subject – situational awareness of an air traffic controller;

Goal of the work – determination of methods for enhancement of situational awareness of an air traffic controller.

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Tasks:

1. To study and analyze the concept of situational awareness;

2. To study the consequences of inadequate level of situational awareness;

3. To study and analyze already existed methods for situational awareness enhancement;

4. To create the new method for situational awareness enhancement.

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Definitions of situational awareness given by scientists:

- Knowing what is going on so you can figure out what to do;

- What you need to know not to be surprised;

- Keeping track of what is going on around you in a complex, dynamic environment.

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Factors that can cause situational awareness loss:

Not appropriate level of situational awareness may results in its loss.

Factors:• System design - the ergonomics of a system;• Stress; • Attention;• Overloading/underloading;• Automation;• Physiological factors;• Abilities/ Experience/ Training;• Working memory. 5

Importance of memory training for situational awareness enhancement

Enhanced situational awareness is an unachievable goal without well-trained and developed memory, because it is necessary to manage all the information reaching the ATC in such a way that it is not missed, forgotten, or overlooked.

Memory training programs produce improvements in working memory skills. To train memory and keep it in shape there exist a lot of methods.

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Test 1: ‘Words memorization’

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Test 2: ‘Kaleidoscope’

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Created new method for situational awareness enhancement

Part 1: ‘Entry test’

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Part 2: ‘Memory test’

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Fragment of the code:

…var planesCreate = function(){

var box = $('.game--area'),plane = $('.plane'),name = '',serial = '',planes_name = ['AUI','UDN','UDC','LOT','LTL','DLH','SBI'];plane_ww = plane.width(),plane_wh = 95,ww = box.width(),wh = box.height(),planes_count = steps;

planes = [];

for (var i = 0; i<=planes_count-1; i++){

var posx = Math.round(Math.random() * (step-plane_ww)); var posy = Math.round(Math.random() * (wh-plane_wh));

new_plane = plane.clone();new_plane.css({

display:'inline-block',position:'relative',top:posy+'px',left:posx+'px',zIndex:2

… 11

Conclusion

Enhancing situation awareness is a critical and challenging part of an air traffic controller's job. Without good situational awareness, even the best trained ATC team can make poor decisions. Situational awareness improvement through better training programs remains the major challenge for aviation research.

One of the major reason of situational awareness loss is an inadequate training of personnel. So, with the help of the created program it is possible to avoid losing situational awareness and prevent inadequate decision making and mistakes.

The created method aims at the determination of the level of situational awareness of the future air traffic controllers and its training by means of created program in a form of test. The principle of the test is to improve memory, so that enhance situational awareness.

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Recommendations

• Use tests for memory improvement: words memorization, kaleidoscope etc;

• Use created method for checking level of memory and for situational awareness enhancement.

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The program will receive the certificate of authorship.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!