Comparison of SAGAT and SPAM for Seeking Effective Way to Evaluate Situation Awareness and Workload During Air Traffic Control Task

Evaluation of air traffic controller’s situation awareness (SA) is becoming important for air traffic management with the growth of air traffic. This study compared two SA evaluation methods: Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) and Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM) to understand how these techniques affect controllers’ predictability in different traffic density settings. Twenty students undertook simple air traffic control simulations by using both techniques. We investigated how these techniques affect their workload with Subjective Workload Assessment Technique (SWAT) and NASA-TLX. SWAT scores showed that high traffic density increased participants’ workload, and extra workload was posed right after answering SA queries. NASA-TLX scores were larger when SAGAT was used than when SPAM was used throughout the simulation. We found that the workload with SAGAT interferes with main tasks more than that of SPAM. The results of query scores suggested that SPAM is more predictive to the assessment of the controller’s SA.