Warning, runway occupied: An evaluation of tower controller behavior when maintaining runway safety

Abstract

As runway safety alerting tools are added into the tower environment, it is important to understand how controllers will integrate new visual and auditory information into their decision-making process, especially in critical situations. To date, research into the behavior of Tower controllers has been largely based on field observations. Since runway incursions are generally rare events and cannot be `controlled', we lack an understanding of controller behavior in responding to these events. In an effort to better understand these behaviors, a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) simulation was conducted to gain insight into the response behavior of Tower Controllers when runway safety alerts are generated. The simulation described provides a snapshot of current day tower controller performance, both in terms of decisions and interactions that can be considered a baseline for which to compare proposed future implementations of new or enhanced capabilities.