Color schemes for a sectorless ATM controller working position

In sectorless air traffic management (ATM) concept, air traffic controllers are no longer in charge of a certain sector. Instead, the sectorless airspace is considered as a single unit and controllers are assigned certain aircraft, which might be located anywhere in the sectorless airspace. The air traffic controllers are responsible for these geographically independent aircraft all the way from their entry into the airspace to the exit. In order to support the controllers with this task, they are provided with one radar display for each assigned aircraft. This means, only one aircraft on each of these radar displays is under their control as the surrounding traffic is under control of other controllers. Each air traffic controller has to keep track of several traffic situations at the same time. In order to optimally support controllers with this task, a color-coding of the information is necessary. For example, the aircraft under control can be distinguished from the surrounding traffic by displaying them in a certain color. Furthermore, conflict detection and resolution information can be color-coded, such that it is straightforward which controller is in charge of solving a conflict. We conducted a human-in-the-loop simulation in order to compare different color schemes for a sectorless ATM controller working position. Three different color schemes were tested: a positive contrast polarity scheme that follows the current look of the P1/VAFORIT (P1/very advanced flight-data processing operational requirement implementation) display used by the German air navigation service provider DFS in the Karlsruhe upper airspace control center, a newly designed negative contrast polarity color scheme and a modified positive contrast polarity scheme. An analysis of the collected data showed no significant evidence for an impact of the color schemes on controller task performance. However, results suggest that a positive contrast polarity should be preferred and that the newly designed positive contrast polarity color scheme has advantages over the P1/VAFORIT color scheme when used for sectorless ATM.