Operational Monitoring in Aviation – a scale and some findings

Abstract

Comparing todays control rooms or cockpits as with those of about 20 years ago clearly shows huge differences in hard- and software making changes in psychological requirements very reasonable. The German Aerospace Center DLR has been conducting studies to identify the ability requirements for operators in future settings like those defined within SESAR and NextGen. In joint workshops with pilots and air traffic controllers held in the AVIATOR project, monitoring was identified as increasingly important. Thus monitoring was in the focus of simulations in a linked air/ground environment and of experiments using an abstract traffic flow task. Moreover a scale for Operational Monitoring following the format of Fleishman’s Job Analysis Survey F-JAS was developedand a model of expert’s monitoring behavior was postulated and extensively tested. The scale has been included in studies with air traffic controllers, pilots, and other personnel. Results demonstrate the increasing relevance of Operational Monitoring across different jobs in and outside of aviation. It is assumed that for jobs with high demand on cognition and decision making Operational Monitoring reflects a vital requirement for todays operators - especially when aspects of automation and system complexity come into play.