Scoring mechanism for automated ATC systems

Given the exponential expansion of air transport that pressures the existing infrastructure and makes the current systems over-capacitated, it is no surprise that automated Air Traffic Control (ATC) Systems are on the rise. These systems will improve the situational awareness of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) while reducing their workload and potentially allowing for capacity increases. An example of such a system is the prototype ATC Real Ground-Breaking Operational System (ARGOS), entirely designed by EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC). The system is evolving daily, and it will become MUAC¿s most intelligent agent to support ATCOs in their decision-making process. It is built to take complete care of basic Controller-Pilot Data-Link Communications (CPDLC), i.e., flights logged onto CPDLC not involved in any complex scenario, and to provide support for complex traffic scenarios. The current version provides conflict detection tools and suggests conflict-free trajectories. The prototype lacks a metrics-based system to evaluate its performance to be able to tune its parameters; thus, the focus of this project is to design a scoring mechanism to assess its performance based on the instructions given to the pilot. The first part is represented by the development of a concept that incorporates the current safety criteria in ATC and introduces new performance criteria relevant to ARGOS (and ATC). In contrast, the second part is a posteriori analysis of the output log files of the prototype that store the coordinates of all current simulated flights along with the commands given by ARGOS. Two types of scores were considered. The D-Score or the decreasing score measures the efficiency of ARGOS concerning operational safety. In this case, a score of 100% is perfect. It is conceptualized according to safety ATC requirements. The I-Score or the increasing score measures the inefficiency of ARGOS, so higher is less effective. It provides information related to the performance of the trajectory proposed by ARGOS.Incomin

Probabilistic Controllled Airpsace Infringement Tool

A current ground based safety net called Controlled Airspace infringement Tool (CAIT) is used by Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) in the UK. It warns them if any aircraft within uncontrolled airspace penetrates the Controlled airspace (CAS) without an advance clearance from the ATC. This penetration or ‘Infringement’ is considered as a major concern to ATCs where it may cause a possible conflict or mid-air collision. A conflict is an event which one aircraft loses its minimum separation to another. A current deficiency of CAIT is that it only warns ATCs if the aircraft has already infringed CAS, this gives the ATC minimum time to react and avoid any conflict. In this research, we investigate a model which warns ATCs of possible future infringements accurately. We implement two Kalman filters (KF) as our tracking tool, one for each flight mode: constant velocity and constant acceleration each of which has its state error covariance. Where the state error covariance measures the uncertainty in the aircraft’s estimated position, and is therefore important for accurately predicting the aircraft future position and since each aircraft has its own characteristic and journey type, a single parameterisation of the state covariance for all aircraft is unsuitable. Therefore, we learn these covariances in an online fashion at each time step to predict the future uncertainties more accurately. Given the two Kalman filters predictions and their error covariances, we use two methods to find the probability of infringement of CAS. The first method, proposed by Macdonald (2000), is called the shortest distance method. We extend this method to be able to find the probability of infringement when the prediction location is near a CAS corner by combining it with Monte Carlo sampling. A hybrid method is introduced to retain the efficiency of the shortest distance method with the accuracy of the Monte Carlo sampling. We also used the switching Kalman filter (SKF) method proposed by Murphy (1997) to choose between the most appropriate Kalman filter at each time step. On testing on real tracks, the SKF was found to give superior predictions of the aircraft location, permitting better estimates of the probability of CAS infringement to be made

ROC Optimisation of Safety Related Systems

1st Workshop on ROC Analysis in Artificial Intelligence (ROCAI 2004), part of the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Valencia, Spain, 22-27 August 2004Many safety related and critical systems warn of potentially dangerous events; for example the Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA) system warns of airspace infractions between aircraft. Although installed with current technology such critical systems may become out of date due to changes in the circumstances in which they function, operational procedures and the regulatory environment. Current practice is to ‘tune’ by hand the many parameters governing the system in order to optimise the operating point in terms of the true positive and false positive rates, which are frequently associated with highly imbalanced costs. In this paper we cast the tuning of critical systems as a multiobjective optimisation problem. We show how a region of the optimal receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve may be obtained, permitting the system operators to select the operating point. We apply this methodology to the STCA system, using a multi-objective (1 + 1)-evolution strategy, showing that we can improve upon the current hand-tuned operating point as well as providing the salient ROC curve describing the true-positive versus false-positive tradeoff

Multi-objective optimisation of safety related systems: An application to Short Term Conflict Alert.

Copyright © 2006 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Notes: In this paper multi-objective optimisation is used for the first time to adjust the 1500 parameters of Short-Term Conflict Alert systems to optimise the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) by simultaneously reducing the false positive rate and increasing the true positive alert rate, something that previous work by other researchers had not succeeded in doing. Importantly for such safety-critical systems, the method also yields an assessment of the confidence that may be placed in the optimised ROC curves. The paper results from a collaboration with NATS and a current KTP project, also with NATS, is deploying the methods in air-traffic control centres nationwide.Many safety related and critical systems warn of potentially dangerous events; for example, the short term conflict alert (STCA) system warns of airspace infractions between aircraft. Although installed with current technology, such critical systems may become out of date due to changes in the circumstances in which they function, operational procedures, and the regulatory environment. Current practice is to "tune," by hand, the many parameters governing the system in order to optimize the operating point in terms of the true positive and false positive rates, which are frequently associated with highly imbalanced costs. We cast the tuning of critical systems as a multiobjective optimization problem. We show how a region of the optimal receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve may be obtained, permitting the system operators to select the operating point. We apply this methodology to the STCA system, using a multiobjective (1+1) evolution strategy, showing that we can improve upon the current hand-tuned operating point, as well as providing the salient ROC curve describing the true positive versus false positive tradeoff. We also provide results for three-objective optimization of the alert response time in addition to the true and false positive rates. Additionally, we illustrate the use of bootstrapping for representing evaluation uncertainty on estimated Pareto fronts, where the evaluation of a system is based upon a finite set of representative data

The effects of tube deformities on the dynamic calibration of a tubing system

Using the Berge and Tijdemen method for tube calibration is powerful as it allows for tubes of various dimensions to be used in a dynamic pressure data acquisition system by using post-processing methods to calibrate for the tubes natural dynamic response. Knowing the tubes response and using the inverse Fourier transform to calibrate the tube system is accepted however knowing how tube deformities influence this calibration is not known. Small singular deformities caused by pinch, twist and bending, which corresponded to a pinch and internal area ratios less than approximately 5 and 3.57 respectively, do not affect the tubing response of a system. Significant effects on the tubes response only occur at pinch and area ratios above these values. Furthermore, pinching ratios above 5 are extreme and represent a tube that is pinched locally to the point where it is almost blocked. This is testament to the tubes resilience to local and internal diameter changes. It can be safely assumed that unwanted and unexpected dampening of a tubing system could be due to a local tube deformity

Libya: A Multilateral Constitutional Moment?

The Libya intervention of 2011 marked the first time that the UN Security Council invoked the “responsibility to protect” principle (RtoP) to authorize use of force by UN member states. In this comment the author argues that the Security Council’s invocation of RtoP in the midst of the Libyan crisis significantly deepens the broader, ongoing transformation in the international law system’s approach to sovereignty and civilian protection. This transformation away from the traditional Westphalian notion of sovereignty has been unfolding for decades, but the Libyan case represents a further normative shift from sovereignty as a right to sovereignty as a responsibility. This significant normative moment demonstrates how far international law has traveled and also where it has not yet traveled. The Libyan case was propelled by a mass movement in Libya, in the region, and ultimately in the international community, which mobilized Security Council action, relying on RtoP, to protect civilians in the face of brutality. In response to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s threat to slaughter his own people amid the “Arab Spring” of 2011, the Security Council authorized, inter alia, a limited military intervention to protect Libyan civilians, invoking RtoP. The assumption under RtoP is that individual states have primary responsibility for civilian protection and that, as a backstop, the international community has subsidiary responsibility for civilian protection by preventing and rapidly responding to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Military intervention pursuant to RtoP is, against that background, an option of last resort, when the other, more modest measures preferred as initial steps have failed (as discussed further in part II). Significantly, in the Libyan case, it was the Libyan people—as represented by an opposition movement (including numerous defecting government officials) that was demanding a more representative government—who called for Security Council intervention to mobilize an effective civilian-protection effort

Procedures for the Integration of Drones into the Airspace Based on U-Space Services

A safe integration of drones into the airspace is fundamental to unblock the potential of drone applications. U-space is the drone traffic management solution for Europe, intended to handle a large number of drones in the airspace, especially at very low level (VLL). This paper presents the procedures we have designed and tested in real flights in the SAFEDRONE European project to pave the way for a safe integration of drones into the airspace using U-space services. We include three important aspects: Design of procedures related to no-fly zones, ensure separation with manned aircraft, and autonomous non-cooperative detect-and-avoid (DAA) technologies. A specific U-space architecture has been designed and implemented for flight campaigns with up to eight drones with different configurations and a manned aircraft. From this experience, specific recommendations about procedures to exit and avoiding no-fly zones are presented. Additionally, it has been concluded that the use of surveillance information of manned aircraft will allow a more efficient use of the airspace while maintaining a proper safety level, avoiding the creation of large geofence areas.Programa Horizonte 2020. Unión Europea 78321

A Legal Approach to Civilian Use of Drones in Europe. Privacy and Personal Data Protection Concerns

Drones are a growth industry evolving quickly from military to civilian uses however, they have the potential to pose a serious risk to security, privacy and data protection. After a first stage focused on safety issues, Europe is facing the challenge to develop a regulatory framework for drones integration into the airspace system while safeguarding the guarantees of fundamental rights and civil liberties. This paper analyses the potential privacy and data protection risks related to civil drones’ applications and looks at the major doctrinal, institutional and legislative attempts but also proposes technological and social solutions to mitigate them.This article was elaborated within the framework of CRISP Project (Evaluation and Certification Schemes for Security Products) funded by the European Commission (Grant number 607941) and the support of the Mobility Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (PRX14/00107). Professors Artemi Rallo and Rosario García Mahamut have reviewed this study

System elements required to guarantee the reliability, availability and integrity of decision-making information in a complex airborne autonomous system

Current air traffic management systems are centred on piloted aircraft, in which all the main decisions are made by humans. In the world of autonomous vehicles, there will be a driving need for decisions to be made by the system rather than by humans due to the benefits of more automation such as reducing the likelihood of human error, handling more air traffic in national airspace safely, providing prior warnings of potential conflicts etc. The system will have to decide on courses of action that will have highly safety critical consequences. One way to ensure these decisions are robust is to guarantee that the information being used for the decision is valid and of very high integrity. [Continues.