PJ.3B Airport safety nets (SAFE)

Title of Proposal:

SESAR.IR-VLD.Wave1-06-2015 PJ.03b Airport Safety Nets

Grant Agreement number: 734139 (H2020-SESAR-2015-2/H2020-SESAR-2015-2)

Timeframe:

According to the SESAR2020 Multi Annual Program: 2016 – 2019

Solution:

PJ.03b-01 -Enhanced airport safety nets for controllers

Project description:

Safety nets at airports are warnings about potential and existing conflict situations, unauthorized incursions and non-conformities with procedures or clearances, given by ATCOs, for traffic on runways, taxiways and in the apron area, stand and gates area, as well as unauthorized and unidentified traffic.

Objective:

The main objective of the project is to improve safety levels at airports of different operational complexity and size (small, medium and large), by providing advanced safety support functions to the controllers, pilots and airport operators.

In SESAR 1, three SESAR Solutions are planned to be delivered with a V3 maturity level and the development of two additional SESAR Solutions will start. This project will build on these outputs from SESAR 1 in view of defining and validating four SESAR Solutions, that further mitigate the risks of ground incidents and accidents, particularly the risks of runway incursions and runway excursions when operating on airport surface.

Activities:

Making the airport surface operations safe and efficient is a must for an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), especially when operating in a high-density environment. In this context, airports become a key element in the air traffic network in order to support the increased traffic trend through new R&I (Research & Innovation) concepts capable of addressing the upcoming challenges that limit airport operations.

SESAR (#SESAR) R&I projects PJ03a and PJ03b support ANSPs by focusing on these new challenges and defining new concepts and functionalities helping Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) to perform their daily tasks.

BULATSA is part of these projects working in an international team with LEONARDO to share its view and know-how to better define such functionalities and support PJ03a/PJ03b validations via a real time simulation at its Sofia center.

BULATSA ATCOs are involved in the validation activities, supported by the A-SMGCS Industrial Based Platform – IBP of LEONARDO installed at Sofia ATC premises, with the purpose of addressing and demonstrating the following aspects:

• enhanced automated Controller assistance for Surface Movement Planning and Routing;
• improved ATCOs and vehicle drivers’ situational awareness, by sharing routes and clearances via data-link communications;
• increased level of safety provided by an enhanced airport safety support tool for ATCOs;
• assessment of human performance indicators in the use of these new functionalities.

Between 22-26 October 2018, BULATSA and LEONARDO conducted validations of functionalities related to Surface Conflict Alert (SCA) Functionalities (PJ.03b).

The validation findings confirmed that the validation software created by the LEONARDO specialists, object of the validation, has the requested functionalities and they work reliably and sustainably. However, before achieving an industrial solution, a number of functionalities have to be refined – mainly on reducing the time to refresh the location of the targets on the screen, as well as improving the Human-Machine Interface – HMI to improve its speed and the commands used to access the functionalities.

Forthcoming is the work on the preparation of the validation report and a Visitor’s Day, which is to be held on 22 February 2019 in BULATSA.