Designing Scenarios for Controller-in-the-Loop Air Traffic Simulations

Within the Human Factors Division at NASA Ames Research Center the Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) is developing advanced automation concepts that help to transform the National Airspace System into NextGen, the Next Generation Air Transportation System. High-fidelity human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulations are used as a means to investigate and develop roles, responsibilities, support tools, and requirements for human operators and automation. This paper describes the traffic scenario design process and strategies as used by AOL researchers. Details are presented on building scenarios for specific simulation objectives using various design strategies. A focus is set on creating scenarios based on recorded real world traffic for terminal-area simulations.