ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one way to try to crack the envisioned world problem, in this case in air traffic control. Through various future incidents that mimicked the rules and roles of the envisioned system as closely as possible, supervisory controllers were able to generate one kind of empirical data about human performance in the future. In air traffic control there is much pressure to automate routine portions of the human task, putting controllers at a larger supervisory distance. This will allow higher system throughput and consequently allow air traffic centres to absorb ever-increasing traffic loads. The basic requirement is to minimise human control involvement in routine events, freeing controllers to concentrate on the key areas where human skills have most to offer: traffic management, system safety assurance, and dealing with the exceptional occurrence”. The idea of management by exception in human-machine systems was born out of the supervisory control paradigm in the mid-1970’s.
