Investigating Requirements for the Design of a 3D Weather Visualization Environment for Air Traffic Controllers

Abstract

This chapter involves a long-term investigation into the applicability of three-dimensional (3D) interfaces for Air Traffic Control Officers (ATCOs). This investigation is part of collaboration between EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre (EEC) and the Norrkoping Visualization and Interaction Studio (NVIS) of Linkoping University in which a test-bed was developed in order to evaluate the different features of a 3D interface for ATCOs. This testbed, known as the 3D-Air Traffic Control (3D-ATC) application, provides controllers with a detailed semi-immersive stereoscopic 3D representation of air traffic. Different aspects of the 3D-ATC application include 3D visualization and interactive resolution of potential conflict between flights (Lange et al., 2006), a voice command interface for visualizing air traffic (Lange et al., 2003), and interactive 3D weather images (Bourgois et al., 2005). Among these various features, the 3D weather visualization was chosen as a first case for carrying out a more accurate users’ study. Weather is considered as one of the major factors contributing to aviation accidents (Spirkovska and Lodha, 2002). As stated by Kauffmann and Pothanun (2000) “weather related accidents comprise 33% of commercial carrier accidents and 27% of General Aviation (GA) accidents”. Moreover, adequate weather information (both for now-cast and forecast information) is often not available to pilots or controllers. The limitation in the way the weather information is represented in current weather displays has been also pointed out in several studies. Boyer and Wickens (1994) claimed that current presentation of weather information is not easily understandable and that it should be made more user-friendly. Lindholm (1999) argued that the incomplete and imprecise weather information currently displayed at the controllers’ working position limits their job function. According to him, a better weather display could increase the controller weather situation awareness and possibly increase their strategic planning role. Boyer and Wickens (1994) reported the fact that the forecasts are generated from data that are collected only twice daily and that controllers require weather forecasts that are updated on a more frequent basis. Ahlstrom and Della Rocco (2003) claimed that pilots frequently chose enhanced real-time weather displays 6