THE EVOLUTION OF HIGH-RELIABILITY COORDINATION MECHANISMS FOR COLLISION AVOIDANCE

ABSTRACT Resource sharing and allocation are important coordination problems in most processes and organizations. They are especially critical in transportation systems, where the resource to be shared and allocated is the space through which various vehicles move and the problem is ensuring that vehicles do not conflict in their use of the space-that is, that they do not collide. Transportation systems are interesting because they accomplish this resource allocation in a highly reliable and often highly distributed fashion. In this paper, we apply coordination theory to analyze collision avoidance as a coordination problem. Coordination theory suggests that coordination problems are created by dependencies among activities and resources that constrain how the activities can be performed. To avoid or overcome these constraints, additional work must be performed in the form of a coordination mechanism that manages the dependency. From this perspective, transportation systems can be viewed as collections of mechanisms for allocating a scarce resource, namely the space through which vehicles move. The claim of coordination theory is that having identified the type of dependency involved in transportation systems, we can consider alternative coordination mechanisms and more importantly, the tradeoffs between them. More interestingly, we can analyze how the use of information technology differentially affects the costs of different mechanisms thus shifting the tradeoff. As well, the range of coordination mechanisms identified may have implications for resource allocation in other kinds of organizations. Resource sharing and allocation are important coordination problems in most processes and organizations. For example, most organizations must assign employees to tasks, schedule limited equipment or allocate raw materials to various products. These problems are solved using numerous coordination mechanisms, such as first-come-first-served, managerial fiat, or market prices. Resource allocation is also critical in transportation systems, where the resource to be allocated is the space through which various vehicles move. In this case, the resource allocation problem is ensuring that vehicles do not conflict in their use of the space-that is, that they do not collide-and again, numerous coordination mechanisms have been developed. In this paper, we will apply coordination theory to analyze alternative approaches to collision avoidance. The contribution of the paper is to identify the coordination mechanisms used for space allocation in transportation systems to provide insight for resource allocation in other settings. As a specific example, we will use the principles of coordination theory and the mechanisms derived from our analysis of transportation systems to suggest several parallel approaches for the allocation of the time of computer-support specialists. A secondary purpose is to identify coordination mechanisms from other processes that might be useful in transportation systems. Finally, we show how the specific characteristics of the systems, such as the use of technology, affect the relative desirability of different mechanisms. This analysis may suggest a comparable technology-related evolution of coordination mechanisms in other settings. Transportation as a coordination problem Transportation systems must allocate many scarce resources, such as vehicles with different capabilities, drivers/operators and space of different kinds: runways, parking spaces, roadway capacity and so on. In this paper, we will focus at the finest granularity and consider the second-to-second decisions needed to allocate space to avoid collisions. Strictly speaking, collision avoidance simply requires that the vehicles not actually make contact-as the cliche states, a miss is as good as a mile. However, because of the degree of imprecision in operations, the goal of these systems is not just avoidance of collisions, but rather maintenance of a more generous degree of separation between vehicles. …