Centerlines - April 2008 - (Page 43) NEW TECHNOLOGY An Ideal Test Bed Frederick-Recascino considered Daytona Beach International an ideal airport with which to partner for this type of applied research. “We believe that Daytona is a good test bed before you make the jump and then transfer these technologies to a busier airport,” she said. “Daytona Beach has a mix of commercial traffic and general aviation traffic, and we also believe the commercial traffic isn’t so heavy that we have to disrupt operations.” The airport sees more than 650,000 passengers annually. Testing this technology at Daytona Beach is important, Zarefoss said, because it needs to be demonstrated in a real-world environment. No matter how sophisticated technology is, simulation cannot anticipate all of the conditions that would be encountered in a realworld situation. “By starting at an airport like Daytona, we can infuse simulation along with real-world traffic and bring that into an environment where the traffic loads are not so high as to preclude experimentation,” Zarefoss said. Arlene Smith, assistant to the airport director at Daytona Beach International, said the airport, which is owned and operated by Volusia County, is excited to be a part of the Integrated Airport Project and agrees that the airport’s size and location make it ideal for the research. “It’s a very busy airport from a movement perspective . . . but the commercial service traffic is not so intense that [the research] is bothersome to the schedule,” she said. “It’s a perfect partnership to have the airport and Embry-Riddle [work] along with the private industry to get this going.” environment.” Integration and the ability to share information are crucial to this project. “You’ve heard a lot about information management and common situational awareness and collaborative positioning,” he said. “All those terms have been used for a number of years now. The key underlying technology to make all of that happen is system integration—particularly, integrated information sharing, or what the FAA would call system-wide information management (SWIM).” Frederick-Recascino added that when you have all of these new technologies operating, it’s critical that they “talk” to one another so that each operator using his or her piece of equipment has an understanding of what’s going on elsewhere—in the air traffic control tower, at the gate, etc. The industry partners working together in the Integrated Airports Project will bring all different types of technology capabilities together on a common information platform so that they can interoperate successfully, said Zarefoss. “Information can be exchanged and the system can be leveraged to the fullness of the capability,” he said. airport environment,” Zarefoss said. Arrival and Departure Refinement Arrival and departure management is another area of research for the project at Daytona Beach. Zarefoss explained that one of the problems airports face today is finding the most effective way to handle the conflict between arriving and departing aircraft and the use of runways, taxiways and gates. What he called “a new generation of collaborative decision-making tools” is emerging which will allow airports to be able to acquire detailed information on the situation in the airport environment—all in an effort to increase efficiency and capacity at the nation’s increasingly crowded airports. One system being evaluated is called ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) a technology where aircraft avionics broadcasts aircrafts’ position, altitude, velocity and other parameters completely autonomously. The system is automatic because the pilot is not involved in initiating broadcasts. This satellite-driven system can show every plane that is in the air and will alert pilots and air traffic controllers if two planes are too close together, FrederickRecascino said. Another technology being evaluated is ASDE-X (Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X) a runway-safety tool that enables air traffic controllers to detect potential runway problems and prevent accidents, FrederickRecascino said. Data about movement on runways and taxiways is collected through surface-movement radar, allowing air traffic controllers to track vehicles and aircraft on airport surfaces and obtain identification information from aircraft transponders. One technique that will be tested at Daytona International over the www.aci-na.org | CENTERLINES Advanced Wind Detection One of the technologies Lockheed Martin will employ at Daytona Beach is an advanced weather and wind detection tool from Coherent Technologies, a division of Lockheed Martin. WindTracer® is described as an eye-safe, pulsed Doppler LIDAR (light detection and ranging) system designed for range-resolved, clear air wind and aerosol measuring applications. In other words, the system uses invisible infrared lasers to detect hazardous winds without relying on precipitation, while meeting FAA and ICAO requirements for laser operation in the airport terminal area. “We think it is going to be very important in increasing the capacity and performance of the The Goal: True System Integration The Integrated Airport Project, says Zarefoss, is a “collection of viable technology that really needs to be brought together in an integrated 43 http://www.aci-na.org
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