Measuring Individual and Team Situation Awareness During Planning Tasks in Training of En Route Air Traffic Control

Abstract

The situation awareness (SA) of air traffic controller (ATCO) students, including the temporal aspect of SA, was measured by means of their visual information acquisition during simulator training. The measurements were defined both at an individual level and at a team level. SA and team SA (TSA) were measured by means of eye-movement data: first, the extent to which individual ATCOs focused or distributed their visual attention in the interface; second, the extent to which ATCO teams were actively involved in planning tasks. Planning was measured based on how ATCO teams attended to tactical and strategic monitoring tasks. This enabled process-oriented measurements of SA and TSA that predicted aspects of performance and were sensitive to situational changes.