Human Behavior Modelling in Socio-technical System Simulation: A Case Study on Air Traffic Control

This work discusses the methodological approach and technical results of a research study aimed at building a model of the cognitive and socio-cultural factors that influence the human performance of Air Traffic Controllers. The proposed model was integrated into an agent-based simulation tool supporting the impact assessment on the performance of alternative operational scenarios in Air Traffic Management. On the base of the specific case study of direct and free routing in southern Europe airspaces, a preliminary scenario analysis and a task-analysis were conducted to describe the environment, procedures and technical systems. After that, a set of Human variables relevant for the tasks accomplishment and Human Behaviour specification were derived. The resulting Human Behaviour model feeding the Agent-Based Simulator combines three types of variables – Personal, Cognitive and Socio-cultural ones – and proposes rules for Human Performances variability to represent a human adjustment to external and contextual conditions such as traffic complexity and pilots’ behaviour in current or future operating scenarios.