SARA-T: Validation of a real-time measurement tool for Situation Awareness

Abstract

Air traffic controllers are responsible for safety and efficiency in an ever growing traffic environment. To provide safe and efficient guidance they are required to overlook the ongoing situation and advise aircraft accordingly. Situation awareness is the most widely used criteria to evaluate if operators can handle complex dynamic situations like these. In an earlier study, a real-time online probe technique has been developed to measure situation awareness in a high-fidelity real time simulator. The technique was designed to allow for the evaluation of situation awareness during the task instead of afterwards. The experiment presented in this paper was done to validate the developed technique. From the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, 99 non-expert subjects were recruited for this experiment. Participants took the role of approach air traffic controllers in the real time simulator NARSIM. Additionally, all subjects completed a battery of cognitive tests, including intelligence, working memory capacity and attention. Results support the validity of the presented measurement technique. In general, subjects with better cognitive performance showed better situation awareness throughout the scenarios. In the future, using this technique it will be possible to determine if an operator’s situation awareness is sufficient while the situation is still going.