Measurement of Situational Awareness In The Supervisory Tasks

Abstract

Large display screens are common in supervisory tasks, meaning that alerts are often perceived in peripheral vision. In this study, visual notification designs which are designed to improve situational awareness of air traffic controller were presented. To have a high level of situational awareness in air traffic control is one of the most critical aspects of achieving a successful performance. Controllers have a stressful job and their workload is increasing with increased traffic intensity of airspace. Therefore, the controllers may overlook the information about aircraft. If the controller is not experienced and does not have a good mental model, they can not easily handle the critical situations. Three visual notification designs were evaluated in their ability to capture individual's attention during an ongoing supervisory task. Notification designs are red font color and background color label of aircraft which has alarm situation and notification window that is displayed at the point of individual's gaze which is detected with the eye tracker. In the experiments, a pilot application developed based on the system currently using the air traffic control management was used. Two-way ANOVA analysis was used to analyze response time to alarm situations and the number of completed tasks. In the results, it is observed that participants noticed faster alarm situations with notification window and red background color designs than red font color design. Furthermore, displaying notification window int he focused point makes it possible to detect alarm situations out of peripheral vision.