Evaluating the design and suitability of the Wildlife Surveillance Concept

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a concept to improve the quality and timeliness of bird activity information provided by air traffic controllers to pilots. This concept is referred to as the Wildlife Surveillance Concept (WiSC) and uses radar sensors to detect birds in the vicinity of an airport. This paper describes the concept and results from a Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) simulation. Previous concept development actIvItIes suggested two primary questions to address through a HITL simulation: 1) what are the impacts of WiSC on a controller's workload?, and 2) How should the information be displayed to the controller? Five Certified Professional Controllers (CPCs) participated in this evaluation using an Air Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) simulator. We compared a baseline condition to 3 types of WiSC presentation methods (target, text, or supervisor). Measures included multiple indexes of workload, push-to-talk communication counts, and responses to design preference questionnaires. The examination of workload data revealed that WiSC did not increase workload. Instead, the data suggested that there are potential workload savings associated with the implementation of WiSC. Results also showed that WiSC reduced the number of push-to-talk transmissions. Questionnaire responses about WiSC design revealed that most participants preferred the WISC target design, and that most preferred displaying WiSC information on a controller's primary radar display. This paper concludes by discussing the future direction of WiSC research.