Fast and Frugal Heuristics conquer the airport

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a human-machine-model for the tower controller working position to investigate human decision making in dynamical environments. The authors assume, that human decision making in the highly dynamical task environment of tower controllers is guided by heuristics. Tower controllers don’t have the time to look for all information in the work environment, before making a decision. They have to use heuristics to interact successfully with their task environment. For modeling the human-machine-system colored petrinets are used (CPN-Tools). The three-step-principle of fast and frugal heuristics is implemented into the controller model. The strength of petrinets is their mathematical background that allows calculating state spaces. Here a methodological approach is introduced that depicts how state space analysis can be applied to analyze fast and frugal heuristics in dynamical environments. This approach can not only be used to analyze heuristics implemented in formal models, but for the analysis of empirical data of human decision making. The application of this approach for the analysis of heuristics used by air traffic controllers in the field is evident.