Carl Westin

10 Introduction necessary to ensure that scenarios were repeatable but not recognizable. Several techniques were used, including scenario rotations, name changes to call signs and sector waypoints, and “dummy” scenarios intertwined with measurement scenarios. A more detailed description of the scope including all its assumptions made throughout this thesis, are as follows: Automation. Future ATC is likely to increasingly depend on strategic decision aid- ing and medium-term conflict detection that is the middle time horizon be- tween executive control and traditional planner activities. In relation to vari- ous level of automation (LOA) frameworks, 42–45 this reflects the the interme- diate functional stages of analysis and decision-making, rather than low-level perception or high-level implementation. Therefore, the conflict resolution aid is configured with a LOA functionality corresponding to management by consent ( MbC ) and management by exception ( MbE ). In particular, this thesis focuses on cognitive decision aids 46 that provide explicit advisories about cur- rent and potential future states for control tasks in highly dynamic time- and safety-critical domains. In reference to traditional LOA frameworks, automa- tion as discussed in this thesis refers to stages of automation that explicitly deal with decision selection and action implementation. 43, 45 Although not explored in experiments, the concept of strategic conformance also applies to control aids , such as autopilots and navigation aids, and perceptual aids that assist in pattern recognition or provide warnings. 46, 47 In all simulation of this thesis, controllers were supported by a novel information support tool for solving conflicts in the prequel simulation. This tool, called the Solu- tion Space Diagram (SSD), represented a high LOA in regards to information integration (i.e., information acquisition and information analysis 43 that was needed to facilitate automation at the stage of decision-making and imple- mentation. As such, the SSD integrated information relevant for identifying and solving conflicts, but left the solution choice and implementation to the controller. Infrastructure. A futuristic ATC infrastructure is up and running (analogous to SESAR and NextGen targets for 2020 3, 6 ), including fully functional digi- tal datalink communication between airborne and ground systems and free- routing airspace. As such, no radiotelephony (R/T) is required to communi- cate clearances to aircraft. Acceptance drivers. In addition to strategic conformance, this thesis considers several other drivers of automation acceptance including complexity and LOA (Chapter 3), trust and source bias (Chapter 4), and automation trans- parency (Chapter 5). Note, however, that there are more factors that influ-