United States Department of Transportation
i
Workload of the VTS Sector Operator And Implications for Task Design
-
1994-12-01
-
[PDF-5.33 MB]
Details:
-
Creators:
-
Corporate Creators:
-
Corporate Contributors:
-
Subject/TRT Terms:
-
Publication/ Report Number:
-
Resource Type:
-
Edition:Final Report
-
Corporate Publisher:
-
Abstract:This study identifies the factors determining the VTS sector operator's workload and recommends
the most appropriate use of automation to manage that workload. Investigations were conducted at
VTS New York (Governors Island) and at VTS Puget Sound (Seattle, WA). The primary tasks, as
measured at both sites, were radio communciations with traffic, the manual recording of vessel
information and track history on cards, and the monitoring of traffic by radar. Analyses found that
the primary determiner of the workload of these primary tasks was the number of participating
vessels monitored by one operator and the amount of associated radio communications.
The findings support the recommendation of a "dynamic" sector to manage workload: that is, an
automated system that could keep track of the number of vessels per sector and suggest an early
hand-off point from a more busy to a less busy sector or, alternatively, a temporary split of a sector.
Additional recommendations include the automation of some vessel communciations and the operator-
friendly automation of vessel information and tracking. The study identified the vulnerability to high
workload of operator-initiated traffic advisories and radar monitoring and recommends automation
to assist these functions.
The report also includes a brief description of an examination of the VTS Upgrade, an automated
console installed at VTS New York in late August 1994, and suggestions for its improvement based
on the findings of this study.
-
Format:
-
Collection(s):
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
