TACTICAL vs. STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR: GENERAL AVIATION PILOTING IN CONVECTIVE WEATHER SCENARIOS

Latorella, K. & Chamberlain, .Z (2002) Tactical w'.strategic behavior: General aviation piloting in convective weather scenarios.Proceedings of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD.TACTICAL vs. STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR:GENERAL AVIATION PIIDTING IN CONVECTIVE WEATHER SCENARIOSKara A. Latorella, Crew Systems Branch, NASA Langley, Hampton, VirginiaJames P. Chamberlain, Aviation Operations & Evaluation Branch, NASA Langley, Hampton, VirginiaABSTRACTWe commonly describe environments and behavioral responses to environmental conditions as "tactical" and"strategic." However theoretical research defining relevant environmental characteristics is rare, as are empiricalinvestigations that would inform such theory. This paper discusses General Aviation (GA) pilots' descriptions oftactical/strategic conditions with respect to weather flying, and evaluates their ratings along a tactical/strategic scalein response to real convective weather scenarios experienced during a flight experiment with different weatherinformation cues. Perceived risk was significantly associated with ratings for all experimental conditions. Inaddition, environmental characteristics were found to be predictive of ratings for Traditional IMC (instrumentmeteorological conditions), i.e., aural weather information only, and Traditional VMC (visual meteorologicalconditions), i.e., aural information and an external view. The paper also presents subjects' comments regarding useof Graphical Weather Information Systems (GWISs) to support tactical and strategic weather flying decisions andconcludes with implications for the design and use of GWISs.INTRODUCTION"Strategic" / "Tactical" BehaviorOperators in complex systems, and those who studythese systems, use the terms "strategic" and "tactical" to bothprescriptively and descriptively characterize operationalmodes. We see these terms used in a wide variety ofoperational domains, from business to disease control, and atvarious levels of systems, from the perspective of acommander of a military campaign, to the pilot of a singleaircraft in that campaign. Planning literature also describesthis continuum by contrasting models that focus on the abilityto generate goals and to hierarchically develop actions basedon these goals (more strategic); and the ability to identifysignificant environmental events and behave responsively tothese (more tactical) (e.g., Hayes-Roth & Hayes-Roth, 1979).In an informal study, Schutte (1997) derived generaldefinitions for these terms by asking pilots and aviation crewsystems researchers to provide five verbs and a shortparagraph describing each behavioral mode. Strategic verbslisted by more than one respondent included (frequencyreported): plan (13), think (5) evaluate (3), anticipate (3),prioritize (2), decide (2), and project (2). Tactical verbs listedby more than one respondent included: respond (6), act (6),react (5), do (5), fly (5), control (4), avoid (4), maneuver (2),and evaluate (2) (Rogers & Feyereisen, 1998). Rogers' (1996)investigation of task management suggests that pilotsdistinguish between strategic and tactical modes based on theamount of time pressure exerted by the situation. Pilots'efforts when in a strategic mode are aimed at solving knownand anticipated task (cf. Funk & Braune, 1999) and workload(cf. Raby & Wickens, 1994) management problems. Whentime-constrained, and in tactical mode, pilots suggest that theyexecute tasks according to a predefined mental list, where theorder of tasks in this list is based on the urgency with whichthey must be addressed. Based on the Schutte survey, the cardsorting and interview tasks in Rogers' 1996 study, and othercard sorting and interview tasks, Rogers & Feyereisen (1998)proposed three dimensions to distinguishing between tacticaland strategic behavioral modes: 1) urgency, or the amount oftime available; 2) breadth or scope of the event horizon howmuch experience is considered and how focused one'sattention is to a specific task and the current point in time; and3) depth of processing or the degree to which knowledge-based processing (Rasmussen, 1986) is used, rather thanbehaving in a skill-based manner. Rogers & Feyereisen(1998) describe tactical behavior as the inner region of thisthree dimensional model, the centroid of which is defined bythe current time, a narrow focus of attention, and a shallowlevel of information processing. The relative size of thesecubic representations of tactical/strategic behavior can varywith personality, experience, stress and workload (Rogers &Feyereisen, 1998). Based on additional interviews and cardsorting tasks, this model was refined to emphasize thatsubjects consider prediction and planning the signature ofstrategic behavior, whereas they consider the actualperformance of immediate tasks as indicating tacticalbehavior. Further, the pilots in their study suggested thatstrategic behavior includes the performance of plannedactivities, emphasizing the notion that environmental certaintyis an element of defining whether one ought to be performingstrategically or reacting tactically.Weather FlyingThe goal of the NASA Aviation Safety Program'sAviation Weather Information (AWIN) element is to decrease