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Cooperative Arrangement
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Location within a site. Arrangement into 16 suites. Small group of workers per suite
(2 controllers, 2 assistants, 1 sector chief), co-location at a suite. Ability to
oversee and overhear one another. Focus on the use and reconciliation of two types of
representations:
- Public display and arrangement of a series of flight strips on one wall.
- Radar screens.
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Representation of Activity
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Various artefacts for achieving control are important. Particular attention is given
to the 'flight progress strips'. These are paper strips that are printed off a computer
that contain information about specific flights, for example flight level, destination,
radio code and planned flight path. Many changes are made to flights dependant on
emerging contingencies dictated in the airspace and accordingly the fight strips are
amended and annotated by hand. These flight strips are placed centrally on a wall and
represent the flow and organisation of the airspace. Strips on one part of the wall
rack represent planes about to enter a particular area of airspace, those on another
are within that area and when an aircraft exits the airspace the strip is removed.
This representation not just on individual strips but in the arrangement of them on
the wall allows the controller to plan and manage the airspace over time. The amount
of aircraft in the airspace and about to enter it provides a resource in which a
configuration of flight paths for any given time is decided. 'The orderliness of the
strips stands proxy for the orderliness of the skies; and ordering the strips is a
means to creating order in the sky'. The different facets of the airstrips and their
placement and configuration are clearly crucial for control, however, they provide
only some of the resources for this work to be achieved. Radar screens too are crucially
important as when considered in conjunction with the strips. While the strips are about
organising and planning the radar provides a at-a-glance 'here and now' representation
of what is actually happening in the skies, how busy they are, in what areas and whether
two planes meant to pass 2000 feet apart are actually going to do so. The different
representations are suited to different aspects of the work. An awareness of the full
situation is provided by the reconciliation of the perspectives by the workers. While
the strips are the most important representations, radar, maps and so forth as also
employed.
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Ecological Arrangement
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Radar is used for visualising the here and now while flight strips are
used for planning and ordering.
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Coordination Techniques
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Coordination is achieved both through the artefacts themselves and the individually
accountable amendments to them and through individual and group interaction with them.
Individual workers may notice something on the radar, for example, and this may
stimulate interaction with others and result in changes to flight paths and therefore
the flight progress strips. Amongst the group coordination is required to reconcile
and compare the different representations of activity that may be monitored, created
and so on by different co-workers.
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Community of Use
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Inter-organisational group of workers in an air traffic control room.
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