SubscribeThe development of eStrips was driven by the need to increase efficiency.
Efficiency gains were perceived as being achievable through the reduction of "per movement" effort by Air Traffic Controllers, the introduction of "silent co-ordination" between adjacent controlling sectors/work positions and by facilitating collaborative decision making processes through the sharing of dynamic (operational) and static (environmental and statistical) data.
Design criteria included:
- Ability to integrate with any flight data system via AFTN, TCP/IP or serial link
- Unlimited number of Controller Workstation positions or repeater displays to be dynamically configured to mimic any workflow role
- One touch workflow actions
- Rapid (<4 secs) creation of new flight data entry including ground vehicle strips
- Sharing of information with other Airport based users through secure protocols leading to enhanced collaborative decision making - data interface to ground vehicle position reporting system possible
- Configurable on-site to suit varying screen sizes and resolutions
Considerable research was carried out prior to "cutting the code" that would produce the HMI (Human Machine Interface) to replace the paper strips.
This research has taken the form of long-term observation of paper strips in use, detailed discussions with practicing ATCOs and practical work carried out in a synthesised operational environment within the BYTRON systems testing facility.
It became obvious that in the operational context a high degree of confidence exists in the use of paper strips.
The positioning of the paper strips in the controller bays, the ease with which the essential flight details can be maintained by hand-written annotations on the paper strip, the use of "standard" symbols to represent actions, the passing of supplemental verbal information at handover renders communication within the local operational environment almost faultless.
With the same basic methodology being employed in small airfields (relatively few movements) as well as in the international airports and en-route sectors (a rapidly growing business environment); it became clear that any replacement based on the use of digital displays would need to handle a number of key issues in order to assist operational managements in addressing the human factors involved in the replacement of a well respected, tried and tested method with a "digital" solution.
The functional requirements specification listed many detailed aspects of the proposed solution; the following is a selection:
- Work flow design and work position layout to be configurable by local operational management/administrators
- Graphical layout and the behaviour of graphical elements to be highly flexible. For example the practice of "cocking out" a strip in the bay as a visual "reminder"
- The ability to display "minimum required" data elements and "drill-down" easily into more data
- Inputs to be possible with the use of keyboard and/or touch screen
- The use of "ON-SCREEN" gestures and annotations to be possible
- The use of context sensitive menu choices and dialog boxes to speed up FDE modification
- "Strips" to be movable by the use of a pointing device (mouse, stylus, finger)
- "Silent" co-ordination and/or proposal/acceptance principles to be possible
- The ability to share workspace between controllers at adjacent sectors, for example in inputting startup/taxi instructions to the system the controller responsible for departure clearances / ground movements will alter the ordering of strips on the Tower controllers display
- Workstation displays guaranteed to be consistent with each other and the FDMS database by the use of checksum techniques
- The hardware architecture of the system to offer 99.999% availability plus the ability to support stand-by displays in the event of local display failure.
It is considered that the use of electronic strip technology will greatly assist the process of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). Inputs made on the "strip", captured by the FDMS are available for use at both the operational level and the administrative level by a number of Airport partners.
These data entries are audited and can represent a highly accurate "log". The resulting data can be shared. For example at the statistical level the data could be used to determine the factors influencing on-time performance.
A practical example at the operational level would be that the Clearance Delivery position could input ready for pushback time estimates given by the aircraft commander. This "in-advance" information can then be used to calculate a target off blocks time and thereby assist optimisation of departure sequencing.
Air Traffic operations could share important dynamic operational data with other airport functions such as Airlines, Handling Agents, Fuelers and Caterers. The CDB (Central Data Base) running on the opposing side of a firewalled connection with the FDMS can be used for storing and sharing "near real-time" data - useful for Passenger Information Displays and archive (historical) data which can be used by in financial operations (e.g. services invoicing), statistical (e.g. on time performance) and marketing/management reporting.
Real time updating provides immediate feedback to data displays, which can be tailored for use by individual operational units.
Alerting mechanisms can be configured to assist those responsible for resolving conflicts in the use of airport resources, and assist the "just in time" planning of those operations most needing assistance in turning aircraft around. For example fueling, cleaning and catering operations can be aware of stand reallocations and delays in arrival affecting time on-ground.
Benefits of deploying eStrips include:
- Existing FDMS Server side processes are unchanged
- No need for specialised printers thereby reducing maintenance and operational costs.
- Reduction in handling of paper documents (Airfield Charts etc)
- Streamlined workflow
- Less need for voice co-ordination between sector controllers
- On-line access to dynamic data such as current ATIS code, QNH, METAR, NOTAM and Squawk Codes, also Airfield Charts and other static data.
- Facilitates the achievement of common situational awareness across the Airport environment and beyond.
There is considerable potential for co-operative development to improve the overall efficiency of aircraft deployments. The availability of accurate well communicated up to the minute information, ("getting the right data to the right people at the right time") must help the quality of decision making, thereby improving the utilization of time limited resources.
It is believed that the achievement of consistent on-time performance and increased capacity through better workflow management can be aided by incorporating into the workflow a number of phases and targets that traditionally are not within in the remit of the ATCU, but which can have serious impact on Air Traffic operations (such as delays in achieving on-time pushback).
The use of a fully fault tolerant Server platform will eliminate unscheduled downtime. This, combined with dual network paths and a fault-tolerant Terminal Services layer will deliver redundancy to work position processing and display.
The complex infrastructures and system management issues brought about through the use of clustered servers will be a thing of the past.
