Human-centered systems analysis of aircraft separation from adverse weather

Adverse weather significantly impacts the safety and efficiency of flight operations. Weather information plays a key role in mitigating the impact of adverse weather on flight operations by supporting air transportation decision-makers' awareness of operational and mission risks. The emergence of new technologies for the surveillance, modeling, dissemination and presentation of information provides opportunities for improving both weather information and user decision-making. In order to support the development of new weather information systems, it is important to understand this complex problem thoroughly. This thesis applies a human-centered systems engineering approach to study the problem of separating aircraft from adverse weather. The approach explicitly considers the role of the human operator as part of the larger operational system. A series of models describing the interaction of the key elements of the adverse aircraft-weather encounter problem and a framework that characterizes users' temporal decision- making were developed. Another framework that better matches pilots' perspectives compared to traditional forecast verification methods articulated the value of forecast valid time according to a space-time reference frame. The models and frameworks were validated using focused interviews with ten national subject matter experts in aviation meteorology or flight operations. The experts unanimously supported the general structure of the models and made suggestions on clarifications and refinements which were integrated in the final models. In addition, a cognitive walk-through of three adverse aircraft-weather encounters was conducted to provide an experiential perspective on the aviation weather problem.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Vigeant-Langlois, Laurence, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• R. John Hansman, Jr.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17833

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17833