IFAV3 is a 3-year SESAR project currently approaching the end of its validation phase and already gathering encouraging feedback from the ongoing activities. The overall scope of the project is to enable a more flexible deployment of air traffic controllers to sectors through various flexible endorsement strategies, procedural means and technical enablers. During the first two weeks of November, the last validation exercise of the IFAV3 project took place in Maastricht.

The concept: Smart Controller Experience Assessment and Required Competency Estimation

Currently, obtaining qualifications for new sectors is demanding in terms of training/maintenance requirements, and time-consuming, which limits air traffic controller (ATCO) rostering and operational efficiency.
As part of a broader working area aimed at increasing the flexibility of ATCO validations, the solution named Smart Controller Experience Assessment and Required Competency Estimation aims to enable a more flexible ATCO deployment to upper area control sectors.

  • Smart Controller Experience Assessment involves the continuous analysis of ATM related data that are already recorded today (e.g. radar recordings) to quantify the concrete experiences an ATCO has gained during recent training and/or daily work, which in turn is an indication of their current competency level.
  • Required Competency Estimation includes the analysis of future shifts (e.g. flight plans, weather forecasts, airspace use plan) against a set of criteria to quantify the expected complexity and demand of the ATC tasks within sectors under responsibility of an ACC.

Both processes together can be used to support a rostering process that always ensures that the ATCO is experienced enough for the ATC tasks that can be expected during their shift in a specific sector and supports a deployment of ATCOs to sectors with a shorter, but always sufficient training. This in turn allows a more flexible allocation of resources based on the demand, significantly improving cost-efficiency in air navigation services by lowering training costs, while maintaining airspace capacity, safety and human performance.

Validation activities in the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre

The last validation exercise conducted in IFAV3 was led by DLR and took place from 04th Nov to 13th Nov at Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre’s (MUAC’s) Training Simulator.
The huge advantages of MUAC as validation exercise location for this trial activity are realistic controller working positions the ATCOs already know by heart, with real MUAC sectors available, and realistic traffic scenarios are accessed.
The participants, 19 ATCOs, ran several simulations initially on their ‘home’ sector where they are endorsed for, then on ‘unknown’ sectors for which they do not hold an endorsement, and finally, as assessors, on their ‘home’ sector again.
A simulated assessment according to the current operational process was done during the validation, and will already provide first insights if the assessed ATCOs are already competent enough for the ‘unknown’ sectors, and under which conditions. This will be compared with an automatic experience monitoring algorithm, combined with a required competency prediction algorithm developed by DLR with strong support from MUAC, which is intended to enhance the ATCO deployment process in the future by making it more flexible.

Looking ahead

As the project reaches the end of its research phase, the insights gained during this final validation campaign, and the ones already completed, will inform the next steps. Detailed results, analyses and lessons learned will be shared through publications, conferences and social media, contributing to the broader discussion on how to reshape ATCO deployment in a smarter, evidence-based and operationally more efficient way.