A Cross-cutting Human Factors Impact Assessment of Planned NextGen Changes

Abstract

The National Airspace System (NAS) Enterprise Architecture (EA) describes Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) goals, operational changes, planned infrastructure changes, and guidance materials. While the primary focus of the NAS EA is on infrastructure delivery, one of the main functions of human factors is to proactively assess and respond to the anticipated impacts of NextGen changes on end-users. The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Human Factors Research and Engineering Division (ANG-C1) has strengthened the presence of human factors activities in NextGen products through the Human Systems Integration (HSI) Roadmap and other NAS EA Roadmaps. This paper will present the en route air traffic control (ATC) portion of the HSI Roadmap and explore potential NextGen human factors integration opportunities to support future en route operations. Opportunities have been identified through the analysis of operational improvements (OIs), decision points, and information obtained through stakeholder interviews. When examining the en route domain, 52 OI-actor pairings were identified with 14 describing automation enhancing situation awareness, 3 describing procedural changes, and 35 describing mixed changes.