Air Traffic Situational Awareness Applications

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Air Traffic Situational Awareness Applications
Søren Dissing/Bill Booth

• ASAS Thematic Network Seminar
• Brighton, UK
• 11 - 13 October 2004

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Expected benefits

• Safety
• Assist flight crews with see-and-avoid duties
• Assist flight crews in avoiding blunders or
  errors
• Provide information to facilitate correct
  decision-making and
• Provide flight crews with information consistent
  with that available to the controller.

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Expected benefits

• Efficiency
• Enhanced Visual Approaches
• Airport Surface movements.
• Capacity
• Environment

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What are we talking about?

• Enhanced traffic situational awareness on the
  airport surface
• provides the flight crews with an enhanced
  traffic awareness on the airport surface during
  both taxi and runway operations
• essential to display all surrounding relevant
  traffic

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What are we talking about?

• Enhanced traffic situational awareness during
  flight operations
• regardless of visibility conditions during flight
  additional data is provided to the flight crews
• essential to display all relevant traffic
• one possible benefit of this application will be
  enhancements made available to the TIBA procedure.

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What are we talking about?

• Enhanced visual acquisition for see and avoid
• aid to flight crews to perform their collision
  avoidance task in areas where separation service
  is not provided by ATC
• Alerting and cueing aids to visual acquisition
  (BASI study, 1991)
• benefits proportional to number of aircraft
  equipped

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What are we talking about?

• Enhanced successive visual approaches
• aid to visual successive approaches where the
  responsibility to maintain own separation is
  given to flight crews
• minimum pair-wise equipage

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Applications statusPackage 1

• ATSA-SURF Enhanced traffic situational awareness
  on the airport surface (NUP II, MA-AFAS)
• ATSA-AIRB Enhanced traffic situational awareness
  during flight operations (MA-AFAS, MFF)

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Applications statusPackage 1

• ATSA-SA Enhanced visual acquisition for see
  avoid (NUP TT Nice)
• ATSA-SVA Enhanced successive visual
  approaches(MA-AFAS, NUP TT Frankfurt)

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Technical solutions

• What is needed
• on the ground?
• no changes in procedures
• no changes in responsibility
• But there may be a need for ATC to be aware of
  equipage!

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Technical solutions

• What is needed
• in the air?
• no changes in responsibilities
• no changes in procedures, only enhancement of
  current awareness
• There may need to be procedures to do nothing
  extra

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Technical solutions

• What is needed
• in the air?
• CDTI functionality
• traffic presentation
• state vector for traffic
• ADS-B equipage/segregated airspace
• potentially INTENT info
• (intelligent) filtering

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An example..
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Alternative solutions

• CDTI may feature as part of A-SMGCS solutions
  (phases 3 and 4) using ground surveillance data.

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Operational approval 1

• All ATSA apps are part of CASCADE
• Requirement Focus Group
• OSEDs for all apps
• thereafter SPR, OHA, OPA
• AIRBUS
• TIBA voice and E-TIBA work

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Operational approval 2

• FALBALA, initial validation of
• ATSA-AIRB
• ATSA-VSA (formerly SVA)
• Operational benefits depend on Operational
  Environment!

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FALBALA ATSAOperational Assessment

• ATSA-AIRB improved common Situational Awareness
  between controllers and pilots
• Little effect on pilot or ATC workload
• Pilot Situational Awareness improved,
  compensating for loss of party-line
• Mixed opinion on what the CDTI should display

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FALBALA ATSABenefits Assessment

• Partial awareness due to partial equipage is an
  issue
• Tendency for pilots to question/hesitate over
  controller instructions
• CDTI clutter filtering (especially TMAs)
• All ASAS applications should be assessed
  together, not just ATSA in isolation

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Human Factors

• .there is a danger of circular reasoning in
  which SA is presented as the cause of itself.
• SA invites further research to discover the
  causal relationships between the design of the
  human-machine systems and the resulting
  performance
• John.M.Flach, Wright State University, Ohio 1995

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Costs and Incentives

• Changes on the ground
• None really, except for the need to be aware of
  equipage
• TIS-B?
• Changes in the air
• ADS-B
• CDTI
• So, the cost is primarily on the Users.

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Costs and Incentives

• Incentives?
• Benefits
• Individual or Collective?
• In Alaska CDTI saves lives
• In core area no investment is likely to be made
  for ATSA applications alone.

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Remember the benefits?

• Safety
• Assist flight crews with see-and-avoid duties
• Assist flight crews in avoiding blunders or
  errors
• Provide information to facilitate correct
  decision-making and
• Provide flight crews with information consistent
  with that available to the controller.

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Remember the benefits?

• Efficiency
• Enhanced Visual Approaches
• Airport Surface movements.
• Capacity
• Environment

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ATSA Issues

• ATM business as usual just better informed
  business with a common picture
• No business case for ATSA alone outside remote
  areas
• Difficult to quantify ATSA safety benefits
• Changes in SA may not produce predictable
  outcomes and should be researched and managed.

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• Questions?