Authority in Increasingly Complex Human and Machine Collaborative Systems: Application to the Future Air Traffic Management Construction

This paper presents an experience-based account of the concept of authority in the context of recent and anticipatory developments in the air traffic management (ATM) domain where airspace capacity constantly increases and international programs plan on developing more technology to increase ATM safety. In this context, traditional individual human factors investigations shift toward new organizational perspectives where authority, understood in terms of the duality of control and accountability, becomes a central concept. Consequently, there is a need to discuss and further define authority distribution, sharing, delegation and trading. We argue that these processes require a better understanding of the evolution of the various emerging air-ground as well as human-automation issues. Increasing complexity, due to increasing capacity as well as time and safety constraints, requires special attention on change management and maturity issues. We provide stability and flexibility metrics for the assessment of appropriate handling of authority, in the sense of “who is in charge and when”, in design.