Carl Westin

C Simulation Briefing Packages C-1 Prequel briefing C-1-1 Introduction Current economic and technological realities are driving a fundamental and global modernization of the ground systems used for ATC. These modernization programs are working toward a ground-up redesign of the tools, systems and methods used. Important changes include high-bandwidth digital datalinks, better data quality, and most importantly the introduction of advanced automated systems to support air traffic controllers in their separation tasks. In this experiment you will work with a new support tool to help you separate aircraft: the Solution Space Diagram (SSD). Details on the SSD are provided below. The simulation will be realistic in some respects, however, we have simplified several aspects of the ATC task. You can imagine yourself controlling a future airspace sector using new support tools that rely on digital datalinks. As such, radio communication with the aircraft is not nec- essary anymore. Another significant difference from current work practices is the omittance of current distance measuring equipment used for measuring separation distances between aircraft. Instead, distance measurement is incorporated in the SSD tool. Further, by using the SSD tool separation will always be assured. C-1-2 Scenarios In this simulation session, you will see a number of short air traffic scenarios (see Figure C-1), each lasting approximately 2 minutes. We have made some simplifying assumptions. First, all aircraft are in level flight at the same altitude. During the simulation you are not able to change the flight levels of aircraft to resolve conflicts. Second, you will interact with aircraft using the mouse and keyboard, rather than