EFDISA

The Expanded Flight Deck – Improving the Weather Situation Awareness of Pilots (EFDISA)

A screenshot of the EFDISA application.

A high level of situation awareness on the part of the pilot is essential for safe and efficient flight operations. To ensure a high level of situation awareness, pilots must continuously assess the weather situation. Currently used pre-flight weather representations, such as significant weather

charts, have not been updated in their visual form for some time and cannot be described as “state-of-the-art” in terms of improving situation awareness. In addition, aircraft sensors used in-flight have a limited range, can only detect precipitation with sufficient reflectivity, and are sensitive to effects such as “shadowing”, which may lead to inaccuracies in the weather representation.

This project aims to improve contemporary pre- and in-flight representations of weather data for pilots. Specifically, we want to develop a novel system to represent the weather situation, which can be run on pilots’ laptops or tablets. In addition, we plan to take situation awareness requirements of pilots into account during the design phase. This novel system will enable pilots to better perceive, understand and anticipate meteorological hazards (i.e., improve their situation awareness) and to make decisions regarding route changes more effectively and efficiently. All of these improvements will lead to improved flight safety.

The project will result in a system to help pilots assess the weather situation both pre- and in-flight. The system will be developed using a user-centred design approach and its improvement over contemporary solutions will be scientifically evaluated with respect to pilot situation awareness, cognitive workload, user experience, responsiveness and decision-making. The knowledge gained in this project will be made available in the form of scientific publications to allow other researchers and practitioners to use our insights to develop similar systems.

Timeline

01.07.2021 – 31.12.2021: Literature Review and Analysis of State of the Art Systems
01.01.2022 – 31.12.2022: Prototype Development with a User-Centered Design Approach
01.01.2023 – 31.08.2023: Study Preparation and Execution
01.09.2023 – 31.12.2023: Study Evaluation and Dissemination of Results