Projects

The EVP/AMAN project was part of the European Reference ATM Validation Platform project (EVP) funded by EUROCONTROL and the European Commission. The aim of the EVP is to validate Air/Ground concepts through simulation and shadow-mode trials based on ADS-B, ASAS and Sequencing Tools. The focus of the activity is towards validation trials using live data both at the EEC (EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre) and at National Service Providers sites’. The results will be used to develop EUROCONTROL recommendations for future system and procedure enhancements by member states.

In the framework of the EVP project, the EVP/AMAN project was assessing the impact of introducing an AMAN (Arrival Manager) into an ATM (Air Traffic Management) environment from mainly the perspective of human involvement and commitment, usability and safety. Some aspects of capacity and environmental impact were also analysed but as secondary objectives because not fully analysable with simulation sessions. Two ATM National Service Provides were involved in the project, namely LFV from Sweden and ENAV (Ente Nazionale di Assistenza al Volo) from Italy.

The AMAN algorithm tested in the EVP/AMAN project was the one developed by BARCO Orthogon for the Osyris AMAN currently in use at Zurich ACC (Air Control Centre). This algorithm  supplied by BARCO Orthogon was integrated into the PROVE (Pre-Operational Validation and Experimental Trials Platform) platform developed by EUROCONTROL. The HMI (Human Machine Interface) developed by BARCO Orthogon, based on classical visualisation of natural and optimised landing timeline, was replaced with the one developed during the project and based on the principle to display the AMAN TTL (time to lose) or TTG (time to gain) advisories directly in the label of the concerned aircraft. During the project the following activities were carried out. Please notice that some of these activity were conducted in parallel and in a recurrent and iterative way :

• Procurements of the AMAN algorithm, development of the HMI required by the operational concept and set up, testing and verification of the platform at the EEC and on site;
• Development and iterative refinement of an operational concept for the introduction of AMAN into an ATM environment;
• Usability Study of the AMAN HMI with Air Traffic Controllers from Stockholm ACC;
• Demonstration of the AMAN HMI and operational concept at Stockholm ACC;
• Field Study at Rome ACC;
• Large RTS at ENAV Experimental Centre in Rome.

Deep Blue role

Deep Blue was involved in the entire project. In particular it supplied the project with a team of 4 persons, with HF (human factors) expertise and proven experience of RTS preparation which supported the project team throughout the whole project duration. This team was deeply integrated into the project team and its main tasks consisted in:

• Organisation, conduct and reporting of the usability study carried out at EEC in Jun 2003 with 4 air traffic controllers from Stockholm ACC;
• Organisation, conduct and reporting of the field study carried out at Rome ACC in Feb 2004;
• Contribution to the iterative refinement of the EVP AMAN operational concept and support in the development of the controller working methods tested during the Rome RTS;
• Preparation of six traffic samples for the Rome RTS based on daily samples provided by the Bruxelles CFMU (Control Flow Management Unit) and referred to some of the Rome ACC busiest days in terms of the arrival traffic in LIRF (Rome Fiumicino Airport);
• Preparation of the experimental plan for the Rome RTS, including validation objectives, metrics, indicators and test materials, conduct of validation tasks during the Rome RTS, conduct of integrate qualitative and quantitative data analysis and report of the RTS results;
• Dissemination of RTS organisation, conduct and results during the AMAN Workshop organised by ENAV at Rome ACC in June2005.

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