Surface Management System

Mosaic ATM is supporting the FAA in the design, development and deployment of the Surface Management System in Louisville, Kentucky. The objectives of the Louisville SMS project include the ability to display flight information, as well as surface and terminal area aircraft positions, to ramp controllers, supervisors, dispatchers and other specialists at the operational facilities of the primary air carrier at Louisville airport. Through the conduct of this project, Mosaic ATM is implementing, testing and deploying SMS enhancements for full operational use of SMS. The SMS has received significant attention from the aviation community recently through completion of technology transfer from NASA to the FAA and through selection as one of NASA’s Turning Goals Into Reality (TGIR) award recipients for 2004.

Airport Surface Operations Data Analysis and Adaptation (SODAA) Tool

The Surface Operations Data Analysis and Adaptation (SODAA) tool stores data relevant to airport surface research and facilitates searching, visualizing, and analyzing that data, with the goal of improving understanding of airport surface operations. Data mining capabilities support research of taxi routing, departure sequencing, and congestion management strategies used by air traffic controllers. The SODAA tool will reduce the time and cost required to build and maintain Surface Management System (SMS) adaptation data sets. Functions built into the SODAA tool can automatically extract traffic management rules that were previously created manually by the expert opinion of the adaptation developer or through interviews with subject matter experts. Finally, the SODAA tool will facilitate benefits and other studies by readily providing large sets of data without each researcher needing to separately collect appropriate data. Mosaic ATM is developing the SODAA tool under a NASA contract.

Airport Perimeter Security Advisor

The Airport Perimeter Security Advisor (APSA) provides computer-based, real-time threat assessment, decision support, and dispatch-able video capability to defend against man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) attacks and other security threats aimed at arriving and departing aircraft and at airports themselves. A MANPADS attack against commercial airliners can be launched from areas well outside the airport perimeter. APSA proposes to solve this part of the MANPADS problem by basing a small fleet of autonomous and dispatch-able mini-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with video cameras and radio frequency sensors on airport property. These will be staged to fly at tree-top level and effectively investigate potential security threats without having to use security personnel.