Philip J Smith (Ohio State University), Roger Beatty (AAL) and Keith Campbell (Mitre)

August 16, 2001

This work was completed with funding from the FAA’s Office of the Chief Scientist for Human Factors in cooperation with the FAA’s Collaborative Decision Making Program. These recommendations were produced under the auspices of the Reroute Advisory Team as part of the CDM Collaborative Routing subgroup.

The specifications described in this document are based on a proposal titled "Design Recommendations for an Integrated Approach to the Development, Dissemination and Use of Reroute Advisories" by Beatty and Smith (2000) that provides a conceptual overview of a recommendation adopted by the CDM Program to develop a more integrated and automated system for the creation, dissemination and use of reroute advisories. Based on the approach described in that document, we have developed a set of more specific requirements, which are listed below. These requirements are based on the recognition that, although this proposal involves the automation of certain steps in the dissemination of reroute advisories, a human-centered approach to the design of this integrated system is necessary as this automation is intended to support the work done by FAA and airline staff during the creation, evaluation and implementation of reroute advisories.

These recommendations were motivated by a series of human factors studies focusing on distributed work in the NAS (Smith, et al., 1999; Smith, et al., 2001). One of the conclusions of these studies has been that there are significant problems in the interactions of FAA traffic management staff at different facilities (ATCSCC, ARTCCs and TRACONs) with each other and with AOC staff as a result of the current advisory system infrastructure. These problems arise in part because of the significant workload associated with current methods for the creation, dissemination and use of advisories, and in part because of ambiguities in the content of these advisories. The impact of this additional workload and such ambiguities is threefold:

• During severe weather events, FAA traffic managers and AOC staff have less time to perform other important tasks because of the extra workload imposed by the demands associated with the creation and use of reroute advisories.
• In some cases, because competing tasks have higher priorities, this added workload results in a failure to file or amend flight plans to ensure that flights are in compliance with a reroute advisory.
• Due to the ambiguities in the content of advisories, they are sometime misinterpreted, resulting in flight plan filings that are inconsistent with the intended severe weather routes.

Below, a set of high level requirements are provided for the development of a more efficient and effective advisory system. Regarding these recommendations, several points merit emphasis:

• These recommendations are compatible with a number of ongoing FAA development projects, including the National Logs Project (ATCSCC), the Route Management Tool (Metron), the Common Constraint Situation Display (VOLPE) and the Enhanced Traffic Situation Display (VOLPE). They are also relevant to MITRE projects, such as the development of CRCT. The recommendations are the based on discussions with the development staff from all of these projects, and are meant to provide input from the perspectives of CDM participants from AOCs, ARTCCs, and ATCSCC.
• While this document focuses on Reroute Advisories, it is clear that the same concepts can be applied to a variety of other ATCSCC advisories.
• This document only describes only the initial steps toward the development of an integrated advisory system. Once these steps are completed, there are a number of other enhancements that could be developed to take advantage of the infrastructure provided by this effort.

The goal of this project is to develop an integrated system for the creation, dissemination and use of reroute advisories. The prospective users include —

• FAA facilities, including:

1. ATCSCC
2. ARTCCs
3. TRACONs
4. Airport Towers
5. Flight Service Stations.

• AOCs
• Information Service Providers for GA flights
• FAA and airline analysts.

The functional requirements to provide such an integrated system include —

• Definition of consistent structure for Reroute Advisories (definition of required and optional fields to be included in an advisory)
• Definition of a consistent and unambiguous set of terminology for Reroute Advisories
• Development of a tool for easy creation of machine-readable Reroute Advisories by FAA Traffic Management staff (this includes checking to see if the proposed route is valid and generating a list of the flights included in the advisory)
• Definition and development of a database structure and communications protocols so that computers at FAA facilities and AOCs can access and interpret these advisories
• Development of FAA software to allow FAA facilities to access and display the advisories of interest to them. This software should include

1. search/filtering capabilities to route the advisories to the appropriate facilities and individuals
2. display capabilities
3. the ability to integrate processing and displays with other FAA software

• Providing the airlines and GA community with sufficiently detailed specifications regarding the content and formatting of the reroute advisories so that they can develop the software necessary to allow their staff and computers to access, process and display the information of interest to them.

Note that these requirements emphasize the need to create software that will provide access to advisories in complementary forms so that both machines and people can understand and respond to the advisories.

Smith, P.J. and Beatty, R. (2000). Design Recommendations for an Integrated Approach to the Development, Dissemination and Use of Reroute Advisories. Technical Report CSEL-2000-16. Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH.

Smith, P.J., Billings, C., McCoy, E. and Orasanu, J. (1999). Alternative Architectures for Distributed Cooperative Problem-Solving in the National Airspace System. Technical Report CSEL-1999-12. Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH.

Smith, P.J., McCoy, E. and Billings, C. (2001). Issues in the Use of Coded Departure Routes. Technical Report CSEL-2001-1. Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH.