	Printer Friendly
	Email Page

Improve Collaborative Air Traffic Management

Summary Description:

This solution set covers strategic and tactical interactions with the operators to mitigate situations when the desired use of capacity can not be accommodated. CATM solution set includes the flow programs as well as collaboration on procedures that will establish balance by shifting demand to alternate resources (e.g. routings, altitudes, times).

Background:

The current Air Traffic Management system uses relatively coarse tools to manage demand and capacity imbalances. The system should minimize over-constraining flights and under-constraining flights. Constraining flights unnecessarily interferes with operator objectives and costs those traveling significant amounts of money. Situations where constraints are too little for the situation similarly generate excess costs. Also operators have limited ability to specify their preferred alternatives when a constraint is required; there is a need to allow input from them on resolving imbalance issues.

The overall philosophy driving the delivery of CATM services in the NextGen is to accommodate flight operator preferences to the maximum extent possible and to impose restrictions only when a real operational need exists, to meet capacity, safety, security, or environmental constraints. CATM strives to adjust airspace and other assets to satisfy forecast demand, rather than constraining demand to match available assets. If constraints are required the goal is to maximize the operators’ opportunities to resolve them based on their own preferences.

Operational Capability Description:

When the NextGen goal is achieved, all airspace operators are able to collaborate on Air Traffic Management (ATM) decisions. Collaborative ATM (CATM) involves the exchange of information to create a mutual understanding among participants of overall objectives and influence decision-making among stakeholders. This CATM ranges from today’s large-scale flight operations center with a complete set of CATM automation tools to hand-held and home personal computers for individual pilots with appropriately scaled CATM collaboration access.

Stakeholder decisions are supported through access to a rich information exchange environment and a transformed collaborative decision-making (CDM) process will provide wider access to information by all parties (whether airborne or on the ground), while maintaining privacy and security. Information is timely, relevant, accurate, and quality assured. Decision makers have the ability to request information when they need it, publish information as appropriate, and use subscription services to automatically receive desired information. This information environment will enable more timely access to information and increased situational awareness while providing consistency of information among decision-makers.

The CATM process recognizes that the expertise, data, and processing capabilities necessary to balance NAS constraints and multiple operator objectives are distributed across many organizations within Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP), flight operators, and other stakeholders. This distribution applies to situation assessment, plan generation, execution, contingency management, and adaptation. To the maximum extent, decisions are made at the local level with an awareness of system-wide implications in NextGen. This includes, to a greater extent than ever before, an increased level of decision-making by the flight crew and/or flight operations centers.

Within this environment, flight operators have a range of flight planning capabilities that optimize flights based on individual mission objectives, available aircraft, security and airspace constraints, and forecasted weather. Operators also have access to an authoritative source of weather information that provides forecasts and current conditions. Flight planning automation uses weather information and system constraint data provided from the ANSP in planning individual flights or groups of flights.

Collaborative traffic flow management (CATM) is the means by which operator objectives and constraints are balanced with overall NAS performance objectives. To ensure that locally developed solutions do not conflict with overall goals or other implemented strategies, decision-makers are guided by NAS-wide objectives and test solutions to identify interference and conflicts with other initiatives. Decision-making reverts to higher authority only when the constraint cannot be resolved. A prioritization scheme will need to be established for the solutions to mitigate constraints and adjustments to congestion management policies may be required.

Flight planning is iterative and interactive. For some operators, flight plans—represented as 4D Trajectories—are planned months in advance. Trajectory and other information associated with the flight are stored in the flight object. As more information becomes available about the conditions affecting a flight, operators are automatically informed and in turn, make adjustments to provide “best known” information via a 4D Trajectory. The level of uncertainty will decrease as the time to actual flight departure decreases. Operators also have multiple options for indicating contingency plans associated with a given flight. For example, a filed flight may include alternative 4D Trajectories that represent the operator’s preferences. The operator also may provide some contingency criteria to the ANSP to provide guidance for ANSP-generated changes to the 4D Trajectory. Operators maintain the ability to negotiate changes to a 4D Trajectory and may initiate a 4D Trajectory proposal in anticipation of a planned constraint.

Flight planners or an operator’s flight planning automation interact with a common flow strategy and trajectory analysis service, available to all NAS stakeholders, that enables common situational awareness of current and projected NAS status and constraints. In addition to having common services to understand the potential effects on a trajectory or the effects of a flow strategy, operators and the ANSP can collaborate on the selection of both capacity management and flow contingency management strategies that balance NAS performance objectives with Flight operators goals. All of the parties have a common understanding of overall national goals and desired performance objectives for the NAS. A transparent set of strategies is in place to achieve overall performance objectives, including airspace management to maximize capacity when demand is high and, as required, flow management initiatives to ensure safe levels of traffic are not exceeded when capacity limits are reached.

Commitments:

Airspace Flow Program: En route congestion is reduced due to weather by equitable management of departure times (e.g. ground delay to an airspace volume.)
Integrated Surface Data: Better surface flight event knowledge is integrated into decision support tools, to improve the accuracy of demand estimation and improve the use of flow management tools.
Reroute Impact Assessment and Resolution: Automation is provided to support identifying flight specific reroutes for weather related congestion and assessing the impact of those planned reroutes in resolving the congestion problem.
Execution of Flow Strategies: Exchange of Aircraft specific reroutes (needed to resolve en route congestion) between TFM and ATC automation.

Mid-Term Capabilities (2012 – 2018)

Continuous Flight Day Evaluation: Improved efficiency and predictability of traffic flow management initiatives and procedures through continuous evaluation of performance. This establishes automated feedback loops which provide decision support tools and/or decision makers with information to fine-tune in real-time and more accurately assess action and system response for longer term adjustments to strategy and tools.

Provide Full Flight Plan Constraint Evaluation with Feedback: Aircraft operators will be able to access feedback (an evaluation of the filing against system constraints); flights can be left as is, or re-filed based on the feedback (allowing operators control in meeting their own preferences while dealing with constraints).

Trajectory Flight Data Management: Changes to trajectories can be negotiated and updated through collaboration processes that ensure requested changes are consistent with flow objectives. Trajectories are monitored with respect to actual versus projected trajectory; aircraft out of conformance results in advisories; updates to trajectories are made, as required, and published. Flight data processing automation uses indicated volumes of interest to determine the relationship of the trajectory and the interest of service providers.

On-Demand NAS Information: Provides expanded constraint and condition information (e.g. eNOTAMs) to improve planning available to all operators.

Assignment of Airspace for Special Use in High Altitude: All airspace for special use assignments, schedules, status changes are conducted system-to-system via data communications. With this change in coordination and communication, the information on airspace for special use is readily available to operators and ATC to improve real-time access and use.

Timeline:

Click on image for larger view

Benefits:

Key benefits from the collaborative environment in the NextGen include the following:

Airspace operators benefit from improved collaborative decision-support tools, which better assess the potential impacts of decisions, reducing the likelihood of unintended consequences. Better decision support also increases the ability to maintain capacity in the presence of uncertainty. Less-conservative operational decisions are made because decision-support capabilities can better integrate large amounts of data over multiple time horizons.

A larger percentage of operators will participate in the collaboration process than do currently. Today’s process is characterized by poor information distribution capabilities and is limited by verbal negotiations. Flight operators gain benefits in efficiency, access, and overall performance, in addition to other national needs which are accommodated effectively.

Because decision-makers will have more information about relevant issues, and improved automation tools, decisions can be made more quickly, required lead times for implementation can be reduced, responses can be more specific, and solutions can be more flexible to change.

Information exchange is more clearly targeted to the appropriate decision makers, reducing workload and unnecessary actions by those not affected. Machine-to-machine negotiation replaces labor-intensive, voice, or text-based processes.

Management of airspace security is integrated into overall collaboration and decision-making.

Participants are assured of data privacy and protection, so that sensitive or proprietary information can be shared in a way that helps to achieve their objectives while improving overall ATM performance.

Improved strategic capability based on dynamic information flows as opposed to static processes.

In addition to improving information sharing with operators, CATM also involves integrating weather into the decision support tools and improving departure flow management. The increased scope, volume, and widespread distribution of information that SWIM provides will improve the dissemination of information which enables the operators to participate in CATM.

Dependencies:

Achieving Collaborative ATM is dependent on ADS-B transmit (out), SWIM, Data Communications, Safety Management System processes, training, procedures, airspace redesign, ERAM, TFM-M, flight object, and NAS Voice Switch.

FY08 Activities:

Key Research:

Human Factors Test and Evaluation Criteria and Simulation Requirements:

Develop new communication and information/display requirements to ensure effective collaboration between traffic management specialists and airline operations centers for different weather conditions and traffic demands.

Planning and initial implementation will commence to ensure that the desired Human-in-the-Loop CATM system performance levels will meet the NextGen traffic demands and NAS operator expectation.

Human-system performance metrics and design requirements for display design, human-automation interaction, individual and team decision-making, and procedure development will be established; training plans and staffing implications will be developed; usability/maintainability tests and evaluations will be conducted; and overall human-system performance through modeling, incremental and full mission demonstrations will be evaluated.

Perform system engineering for methods and interfaces for exchange of constraint information among Traffic Flow Management, En Route automation, and Terminal automation

Demonstrations:

None

Other Activities:

Accelerate Deployment of CATM Capabilities: Develop requirements to upgrade the Traffic Flow Management System for an initial dynamic airspace capability thus accelerating the development of CATM to expand solutions available to address capacity imbalance problems. This effort will expand the strategic flow analysis capability to include the location, status, and projected wheels up or gate arrival time of aircraft on airport/runway surfaces. This will provide better insight into the other phases of flights, thereby improving traffic flow strategies. For FY08 the program will begin the Initial Operating Capability (IOC) of the modernized TFM system, as well as the update of the business case for Route Availability Planning Tool (RAPT) in New York.

SWIM Program will meet the need of a more agile NAS information architecture and system infrastructure in order to support operational efficiencies, by providing a secure NAS-wide information web to connect FAA systems to each other, and enable interaction with other members of the decision making community including other agencies, air navigation service providers, and airspace operators. SWIM will develop policies and standards to support data management, along with the core services needed to enter data into the network, retrieve it, secure its integrity, and control its access and use.

SWIM: Begin development of Segment 1; continue X.25 to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) protocol transition as early SWIM acquisition effort.

Space Debris Response Requirements: Develop requirements to incorporate identification of hazardous space debris areas into flow management functions, and concepts and tools for responding to space debris events.