Situation Awareness in the NextGen Air Traffic Management System

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is expected to revolutionize how air traffic will be managed and significantly enhance the capacity of the National Airspace System in the United States. Because NextGen is a system that requires a high level of interaction between human operators and technology, there is a need to assess how NextGen tools and concepts of operation will impact operator situation awareness (SA). The goal of this study is to highlight the importance of SA to operator performance in complex systems. The defended view is that SA is situated, which means that operators rely in fundamental ways on interactions with external tools to maintain their understanding of a situation, minimizing internal memory storage of task relevant information. Consequently, SA metrics must be conducted in the context where operators have access to their displays and tools. The article ends with a discussion of how the situated SA approach can be used to explain the acquisition of shared SA in distributed teams and to guide applied research relating to the evaluation and development of NextGen concepts and tools.