Towards Automatic Trajectory Modification for Reducing Air Traffic Complexity Using an ATC Difficulty Index

Monitoring performance is an essential part of an air traffic management system and requires appropriate metrics such as complexity and safety corresponding to the monitoring objectives. We have proposed as a new metric an air traffic control (ATC) difficulty index that quantifies the 'difficulty' of an air traffic situation from an air traffic controller workload perspective. Once a traffic situation with a potentially high difficulty is predicted, it is desirable that an advisory should be provided to controllers to enable the trajectory modification of key aircraft to mitigate the difficulty. To investigate the feasibility of developing a controller decision support tool that can provide candidate trajectory modifications to mitigate high difficulty traffic situations, we have started a conceptual study based on simulations. This paper reports preliminary results of the study. We first describe the background of the study and briefly explain the proposed difficulty index. Then, we indicate the concept and algorithm for automatic trajectory modification and describe our approach for moving forward and challenges.