European Organisation

This report describes a small-scale project about the impact that future ATM technologies may have on safety culture in ATM. The overall objectives of this project were to: i) gather evidence for the impact of recently introduced systems on safety culture and ii) examine the potential impact future ATM functions may have on safety culture that could potentially affect safety. This was undertaken in three stages: literature review; controller survey of how recent changes in ATM technology had affected safety culture and how future changes could affect safety culture; and interviews with system developers regarding future changes. The findings from the literature review helped to identify some of the relevant safety culture factors that were used in the controller survey. These were chosen on the basis of being relevant to safety culture at the operator-level as well as to changes in technology. Very little research has attempted to predict how safety culture may be affected with new technologies. The safety culture factors used in the survey were: team-work; communication; trust in people; trust in equipment; understanding of risk; understanding of competence of others; personal responsibility for safety; job pressure and job satisfaction. The interview survey was carried out with 33 controllers at four European ANSPs during October-December, 2004. Changes in safety culture were discussed with regard to recently introduced technologies (such as OLDI, STCA, Human-Machine Interface) and future technologies (such as MTCD (medium term conflict detection), CORA (conflict resolution assistant), datalink and ASAS (airborne separation assurance system). The main findings suggest that teamwork and communication appear to be particularly vulnerable to change, although controllers also indicated that there is high chance that their understanding of the risks and their job satisfaction may change with new technology. Controllers trust in equipment, personal responsibility for safety and job pressure were also predicted to change with the implementation of new technology. Two lines for future research in this area have been identified as: i) further investigation regarding the safety culture aspects in ATM and development of a tool or method to measure safety culture and ii) focus on aspects of the ATM 2012 at risk. Change in ATM Safety Culture due to New Technology EUROCONTROL Project C24/2004 EEC Note No. 13/05 v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ANNEXES........................................................................................................... VI LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ VI LIST OF TABLES.............................................................................................................. VI