Human Error Tolerant Design for Air Traffic Control Systems

In man-machine systems, many system failures are due to operator error. Therefore, human component must be taken into account in the development of safety-critical systems. The work* described in this paper is part of a research project whose goal is to design an operator error tolerant interface for the on-line maintenance of an air traffic control system. Operator error tolerance is aimed at avoiding system failure in spite of the presence of operator error. It can be achieved through three phases: operator error detection, technical system error detection and error recovery. This paper examines each of these phases.