A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Organisational Psychology), 2017 / The aim of the present study was to utilise a mixed methods design as a means of investigating the relation between job demands, job resources, safety, and burnout in Air Traffic Management (ATM) technicians. It was also of interest to determine participants’ perspectives on the job demands and resources that may be present in their occupational environment, their participation in safety behaviours, and their perceptions regarding their work and safety performance. Non-probability, convenience sampling was employed to acquire the participants of the present research study. Participants included 33 ATM technicians (50.77% response rate) who took part in the quantitative component of the research study and 14 ATM who took part in the interview process. Participants’ ages ranged from 27 to 55 years (M = 38.91; SD = 8.76) and 90.1% were male (n = 30). Jackson and Rothmann’s (2005) original Job Demands-Resources Scale was used for the assessment of the job demands and resources sixteen items were also added to the original JDRS scale. Sixteen items were added to incorporate the possible job resources and demands experienced by ATM technicians, which were separated into the following sub-scales: shifts, weather conditions, travel, and equipment. Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach, and Jackson’s (1996) Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBIGS) was used to assess ATM technicians’ burnout. Safety behaviours were assessed through the integration of items found within two safety behaviour scales developed by Neal and Griffin (2006) and Hofmann and Morgeson (1999). A semi-structured interview process consisting of open-ended questions was used to discuss the following issues: job tasks, job demands, job resources, burnout, job safety, work-family spillover, and job performance. The findings depicted a weak, positive correlation between the perception of job demands and the experience of burnout (r = .376, p < .05) and a weak, negative correlation between the perception of job resources and the experience of burnout (r = -.383, p < .05). Job resources significantly predicted the experience of burnout (β = -.494, p = .002), as did job demands (β = .489, p = .003). A moderate, positive correlation between the perception of job resources and safety behaviours was obtained (r = .514, p < .01). The participants’ perceptions of job resources explained 26.5% of the variance in safety behaviours, (R2= .265, F(1, 31) = 11.16, p < 0.05. ATM technicians took part in the following safety behaviours: they consistently communicated with both management and air traffic controllers as a way of knowing exactly what the problem is before they went to a site, they took part in training programs as a means of keeping up to date with the latest technological knowledge, attended safety meetings, always communicated with management on how to increase safety, and made sure that a first aid kit was always available. ATM technician’s safety and performance appeared to be heavily influenced by their own personal understanding of the occupation’s risks, the weather conditions that take place on each specific site, the safety equipment that is worn, the knowledge of the possible repercussions that may arise from making any mistakes, and their own individual mood or disposition. / XL2018

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a dominant force in the aerospace industry. Recent technological developments have moved these aircraft from remote operation roles to more active response missions. Of particular interest is the possibility of applying UAVs toward solving complex problems in long-endurance missions. Under that belief, the feasibility of utilizing UAVs for wildfire detection and response was investigated in a partnership that included NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate, and the United States Forest Service. Under NASA’s Intelligent Mission Management (IMM) project, research was conducted to develop a mission architecture that would enable use of a high altitude UAV to search for reported wildfires with a separate low altitude UAV supporting ground assets. This research proposes a “straw man” concept incorporating both a High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAV and a Low Altitude Short Endurance (LASE) UAV in a loosely coupled, low cost solution tailored towards wildfire response. This report identifies the communications architecture, algorithms, and required system configuration that meets the outlined goals of the IMM project by mitigating wildfires and addressing the United States Forest Service immediate needs. The end product is a defined parent-child framework capable of meeting all wildfire mission goals. The concept has been implemented in simulation, the results of which are presented in this report.

No description available.

Air traffic communication is one of the most vital systems for air traffic management controllers. It is used every day to allow millions of people to travel safely and efficiently across the globe. But many of the systems considered industry-standard are used without any sort of encryption and authentication meaning that they are vulnerable to different wireless attacks. In this thesis vulnerabilities within an air traffic management system called ADS-B will be investigated. The structure and theory behind this system will be described as well as the reasons why ADS-B is unencrypted. Two attacks will then be implemented and performed in an open-source air traffic management simulator called openScope. ADS-B data from these attacks will be gathered and combined with actual ADS-B data from genuine aircrafts. The collected data will be cleaned and used for machine learning purposes where three different algorithms will be applied to detect attacks. Based on our findings, where two out of the three machine learning algorithms used were able to detect 99.99% of the attacks, we propose that machine learning algorithms should be used to improve ADS-B security. We also think that educating air traffic controllers on how to detect and handle attacks is an important part of the future of air traffic management.

We develop a detailed, large-scale, airspace planning and collaborative decision-making model (APCDM), that is part of an $11.5B, 10-year, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-sponsored effort to increase U.S. National Airspace (NAS) capacity by 30 percent. Given a set of flights that must be scheduled during some planning horizon, we use a mixed-integer programming formulation to select a set of flight plans from among alternatives subject to flight safety, air traffic control workload, and airline equity constraints. Novel contributions of this research include three-dimensional probabilistic conflict analyses, the derivation of valid inequalities to tighten the conflict safety representation constraints, the development of workload metrics based on average (and its variance from) peak load measures, and the consideration of equity among airline carriers in absorbing the costs related to re-routing, delays, and cancellations. We also propose an improved set of flight plan cost factors for representing system costs and investigating fairness issues by addressing flight dependencies occurring in hubbed operations, as well as market factors such as schedule convenience, reliability, and the timeliness of connections. The APCDM model has potential use for both tactical and strategic applications, such as air traffic control in response to severe weather phenomenon or spacecraft launches, FAA policy evaluation, Homeland Defense contingency planning, and military air campaign planning. The model is tested to consider various airspace restriction scenarios imposed by dynamic severe weather systems and space launch Special Use Airspace (SUA) impositions. The results from this model can also serve to augment the FAA's National Playbook of standardized flight profiles in different disruption-prone regions of the National Airspace. / Ph. D.

Develop new strategies to design and operate the multilateration systems, used for air traffic control operations, in a more efficient way. The design strategies are based on the utilization of metaheuristic optimization techniques and they are intended to found the optimal spatial distribution of the system ground stations, taking into account the most relevant system operation parameters. The strategies to operate the systems are based on the development of new positioning methods which allow solving the problems of uncertainty position and poor accuracy that the current systems can present. The new strategies can be applied to design, deploy and operate the multilateration systems for airport surface surveillance as well as takeoff-landing, approach and enroute control. An important advance in the current knowledge of air traffic control is expected from the development of these strategies, because they solve several deficiencies that have been made clear, by the international scientific community, in the last years. / Mantilla Gaviria, IA. (2013). New Strategies to Improve Multilateration Systems in the Air Traffic Control [Tesis doctoral]. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/29688

The Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation, the International Federation of Air Traffic Control Associations, the International Air Transport Association and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation agree that professionals in the Air Navigation Services Provider Sector require successful organisational leadership to facilitate and manage transformation within the highly regulated Air Navigation Services Provider Sector. Detailed organisational leadership requirements and associated leadership training and development needs are, however, not specified by the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation. An opportunity therefore existed to investigate leadership traits and behaviours within a specific context. This research project is contextualised within a safety-conscious, highly regulated and technology-driven industry (the South African Aviation Industry), a safety-critical sector (Air Navigation Services) and specifically the Air Traffic and Navigation Services Company. It was found that little academic research has been done to address the role of followers in the leadership process and to determine what followers expect and require from their leaders. The research problem statement, in response to this research necessity, is: “How can follower experiences and expectations of leadership behaviours in a safety-critical commercial environment be collected, analysed, understood, structured and utilised to aid leadership development?” An ethnographic research case study approach allowed the researcher to investigate the multifarious phenomena that constitute the current views (experiences and expectations) held by followers with regard to leadership behaviour qualities. A mixed methods approach was followed. Data collection was facilitated by means of individual interviews, focus group interviews, field notes and a structured questionnaire. Qualitative data were inductively analysed to identify the recurring patterns and common themes and quantitative data were deductively analysed to assess the nature of existing conditions and relevance. Data and method triangulation was implemented to determine whether multiple sources of data agreed, and to obtain better, cross-checked insights. Findings from this research study provided academic, industry, process and methodology insights into views held by followers regarding leadership and followership constructs. Definitions and perspectives held and reported by followers regarding leaders and leadership, characteristics of preferred and undesired leadership styles, relational and emotional bonds between followers and their leaders acknowledged the presence, value and influence of follower mental models. In this case followers contextualised leadership roles and responsibilities and suggested a transformational leadership style as a desired state. Findings also emphasised a need to appreciate the importance of the social exchange and social contingency theories of leadership in order to create a better understanding of leadership by emphasising the importance of context when studying leaders and leadership from a follower perspective. Obtained follower insights resulted in a structured leadership training and development needs analysis process framed within the specific context. Future research efforts in this regard may be aimed at determining the necessity to educate followers to critically appreciate and evaluate leadership performance and creating a better understanding of how followers’ mental models internally represent complex, dynamic systems and how these representations change over time. / Business Management / DBL

Cette thèse traite de la gestion du trafic aérien et plus précisément, de l’optimisation globale des plans de vol déposés par les compagnies aériennes sous contrainte du respect de la capacité de l’espace aérien. Une composante importante de ce travail concerne la gestion de l’incertitude entourant les trajectoires des aéronefs. Dans la première partie du travail, nous identifions les principales causes d’incertitude au niveau de la prédiction de trajectoires. Celle-ci est la composante essentielle à l’automatisation des systèmes de gestion du trafic aérien. Nous étudions donc le problème du réglage automatique et en-ligne des paramètres de la prédiction de trajectoires au cours de la phase de montée avec l’algorithme d’optimisation CMA-ES. La principale conclusion, corroborée par d’autres travaux de la littérature, implique que la prédiction de trajectoires des centres de contrôle n’est pas suffisamment précise aujourd’hui pour supporter l’automatisation complète des tâches critiques. Ainsi, un système d’optimisation centralisé de la gestion du traficaérien doit prendre en compte le facteur humain et l’incertitude de façon générale.Par conséquent, la seconde partie traite du développement des modèles et des algorithmes dans une perspective globale. De plus, nous décrivons un modèle stochastique qui capture les incertitudes sur les temps de passage sur des balises de survol pour chaque trajectoire. Ceci nous permet d’inférer l’incertitude engendrée sur l’occupation des secteurs de contrôle par les aéronefs à tout moment.Dans la troisième partie, nous formulons une variante du problème classique du Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management au cours de la phase tactique. L’intérêt est de renforcer les échanges d’information entre le gestionnaire du réseau et les contrôleurs aériens. Nous définissons donc un problème d’optimisation dont l’objectif est de minimiser conjointement les coûts de retard et de congestion tout en respectant les contraintes de séquencement au cours des phases de décollage et d’attérissage. Pour combattre le nombre de dimensions élevé de ce problème, nous choisissons un algorithme évolutionnaire multiobjectif avec une représentation indirecte du problème en se basant sur des ordonnanceurs gloutons. Enfin, nous étudions les performances et la robustesse de cette approche en utilisant le modèle stochastique défini précédemment. Ce travail est validé à l’aide de problèmes réels obtenus du Central Flow Management Unit en Europe, que l’on a aussi densifiés artificiellement. / In this thesis, we investigate the issue of optimizing the aircraft operators' demand with the airspace capacity by taking into account uncertainty in air traffic management. In the first part of the work, we identify the main causes of uncertainty of the trajectory prediction (TP), the core component underlying automation in ATM systems. We study the problem of online parameter-tuning of the TP during the climbing phase with the optimization algorithm CMA-ES. The main conclusion, corroborated by other works in the literature, is that ground TP is not sufficiently accurate nowadays to support fully automated safety-critical applications. Hence, with the current data sharing limitations, any centralized optimization system in Air Traffic Control should consider the human-in-the-loop factor, as well as other uncertainties. Consequently, in the second part of the thesis, we develop models and algorithms from a network global perspective and we describe a generic uncertainty model that captures flight trajectories uncertainties and infer their impact on the occupancy count of the Air Traffic Control sectors. This usual indicator quantifies coarsely the complexity managed by air traffic controllers in terms of number of flights. In the third part of the thesis, we formulate a variant of the Air Traffic Flow and Capacity Management problem in the tactical phase for bridging the gap between the network manager and air traffic controllers. The optimization problem consists in minimizing jointly the cost of delays and the cost of congestion while meeting sequencing constraints. In order to cope with the high dimensionality of the problem, evolutionary multi-objective optimization algorithms are used with an indirect representation and some greedy schedulers to optimize flight plans. An additional uncertainty model is added on top of the network model, allowing us to study the performances and the robustness of the proposed optimization algorithm when facing noisy context. We validate our approach on real-world and artificially densified instances obtained from the Central Flow Management Unit in Europe.

The Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation, the International Federation of Air Traffic Control Associations, the International Air Transport Association and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation agree that professionals in the Air Navigation Services Provider Sector require successful organisational leadership to facilitate and manage transformation within the highly regulated Air Navigation Services Provider Sector. Detailed organisational leadership requirements and associated leadership training and development needs are, however, not specified by the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation. An opportunity therefore existed to investigate leadership traits and behaviours within a specific context. This research project is contextualised within a safety-conscious, highly regulated and technology-driven industry (the South African Aviation Industry), a safety-critical sector (Air Navigation Services) and specifically the Air Traffic and Navigation Services Company. It was found that little academic research has been done to address the role of followers in the leadership process and to determine what followers expect and require from their leaders. The research problem statement, in response to this research necessity, is: “How can follower experiences and expectations of leadership behaviours in a safety-critical commercial environment be collected, analysed, understood, structured and utilised to aid leadership development?” An ethnographic research case study approach allowed the researcher to investigate the multifarious phenomena that constitute the current views (experiences and expectations) held by followers with regard to leadership behaviour qualities. A mixed methods approach was followed. Data collection was facilitated by means of individual interviews, focus group interviews, field notes and a structured questionnaire. Qualitative data were inductively analysed to identify the recurring patterns and common themes and quantitative data were deductively analysed to assess the nature of existing conditions and relevance. Data and method triangulation was implemented to determine whether multiple sources of data agreed, and to obtain better, cross-checked insights. Findings from this research study provided academic, industry, process and methodology insights into views held by followers regarding leadership and followership constructs. Definitions and perspectives held and reported by followers regarding leaders and leadership, characteristics of preferred and undesired leadership styles, relational and emotional bonds between followers and their leaders acknowledged the presence, value and influence of follower mental models. In this case followers contextualised leadership roles and responsibilities and suggested a transformational leadership style as a desired state. Findings also emphasised a need to appreciate the importance of the social exchange and social contingency theories of leadership in order to create a better understanding of leadership by emphasising the importance of context when studying leaders and leadership from a follower perspective. Obtained follower insights resulted in a structured leadership training and development needs analysis process framed within the specific context. Future research efforts in this regard may be aimed at determining the necessity to educate followers to critically appreciate and evaluate leadership performance and creating a better understanding of how followers’ mental models internally represent complex, dynamic systems and how these representations change over time. / Business Management / DBL

This program of research was aimed at investigating a novel application of computer aided text analysis (CATA). To date, CATA has been used in a wide variety of disciplines, including Psychology, but never in the area of personnel selection. Traditional personnel selection techniques have met with limited success in the prediction of costly training failures for some occupational groups such as pilot and air traffic controller. Accordingly, the overall purpose of this thesis was to assess the validity of linguistic style to select personnel. Several studies were used to examine the structure of language in a personnel selection setting; the relationship between linguistic style and the individual differences dimensions of ability, personality and vocational interests; the validity of linguistic style as a personnel selection tool and the differences in linguistic style across occupational groups. The participants for the studies contained in this thesis consisted of a group of 810 Royal Australian Air Force Pilot, Air Traffic Control and Air Defence Officer trainees. The results partially supported two of the eight hypotheses; the other six hypotheses were supported. The structure of the linguistic style measure was found to be different in this study compared with the structure found in previous research. Linguistic style was found to be unrelated to ability or vocational interests, although some overlap was found between linguistic style and the measure of personality. In terms of personnel selection validity, linguistic style was found to relate to the outcome of training for the occupations of Pilot, Air Traffic Control and Air Defence Officer. Linguistic style also demonstrated incremental validity beyond traditional ability and selection interview measures. The findings are discussed in light of the Five Factor Theory of Personality, and motivational theory and a modified spreading activation network model of semantic memory and knowledge. A general conclusion is drawn that the analysis of linguistic style is a promising new tool in the area of personnel selection.