Carl Westin

148 Consistency and agreement in conflict resolution It was not possible to determine whether any classification was more accurate than the other. Overall, controllers tended to strive for the same spatial relationship between the conflicting aircraft. With increased experience, however, the spatial relationship appeared to loose strength in favor for the control preferences in solving conflicts. Rather, results suggest that the classifications reflect differences between individuals and their perception of and preferences for solving conflicts. Results partly supported our expectation in that controllers were less consistent and more in disagreement on how to solve the conflict, when the conflict was unbiased and did not favor a certain solution. Taken together, the two studies indicate that consistency varies both with the sit- uation and individual. For many problems, especially those that lack golden criteria for optimum decisions such as CD&R in ATC, solutions vary depending on who solves it. The observed individual diversity in conflict solving can partly explain the acceptance problems observed in relation to CD&R decision aids that tradition- ally have assumed that controllers solve conflicts similarly. The findings in this chapter challenges the feasibility of considering controllers homogeneous in the de- sign of automated CD&R decision aids. Consequently, the development of future automated systems should better accommodate individual differences in decision- making and problem-solving activities, not only in ATC. Developing decision aids that provide specific solutions may, however, not be the best approach. Rather, in- dividual decision-making preferences can perhaps better be facilitated by providing decision support tools, such as the SSD, that enable controllers to more efficiently and safely solve problems in their own preferred way. On the other hand, this may not be practical when considering the requirement for increased traffic throughput, resulting in less time available to control individual aircraft.