Colored Petri net based modeling of airport control processes

Abstract

Within the DLR project Remote Airport Tower Operation Research (RapTOr) an augmented vision video panorama system and a corresponding HMI is developed for remote surface movement management on small airports and for movement areas not directly visible from the control tower. Runway and Ground traffic management for the small airport will then be performed from a remotely located tower at a different medium size airport. A major challenge consists in integrating the future work processes for remote control into the current work situation on the medium size airport. Starting from the current work process structure the new remote control working processes should be designed and evaluated by a formal work process model. The paper shows a formal approach for the description and modeling of work processes based on a cognitive work analysis. It is shown how the results of a cognitive work analysis on a medium size airport are transferred into a formal executable human machine model for simulating the controllers work processes to control the airport processes. The formal model serves for an evaluation of different variants of work organization, a design of a new working position and monitoring of psychological parameters. Critical system states and inconsistencies in the human machine system are identified through comparison of the knowledge state of the controllers with process states of the airport system. The first steps of model verification and validation are introduced in this paper.