Ecological Interface Design and its application to Total Airport Management

The concept of Total Airport Management aims at harmonizing and optimizing the processes at an airport through the implementation of an airport operations plan. For this purpose and to guarantee the acceptance of the airport operation plan from all stakeholders, it was proposed to develop a control room in which stakeholders negotiate a quality of service contract and airport processes. This control room will, amongst others, be equipped with a large videowall, which should enable stakeholders yielding sound common situation awareness. This paper introduces an information representation for the videowall, which should support knowledge-based behaviour, and, thus, applies the Ecological Interface Design Guidelines. Therefor, it discusses how the Total Airport Management system´s functional purpose, abstract functions, generalized functions, physical processes, and physical form may be presented appropriately on the videowall. Herewith, this paper generalizes the Ecological Interface Design approach to airport management and provides a theory-based proposition of the videowall´s design.