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Trajectory Clustering and an Application to Airspace Monitoring
This paper presents a framework aimed at monitoring the behavior of aircraft
in a given airspace. Nominal trajectories are determined and learned using data
driven methods. Standard procedures are used by air traffic controllers (ATC)
to guide aircraft, ensure the safety of the airspace, and to maximize the
runway occupancy. Even though standard procedures are used by ATC, the control
of the aircraft remains with the pilots, leading to a large variability in the
flight patterns observed. Two methods to identify typical operations and their
variability from recorded radar tracks are presented. This knowledge base is
then used to monitor the conformance of current operations against operations
previously identified as standard. A tool called AirTrajectoryMiner is
presented, aiming at monitoring the instantaneous health of the airspace, in
real time. The airspace is "healthy" when all aircraft are flying according to
the nominal procedures. A measure of complexity is introduced, measuring the
conformance of current flight to nominal flight patterns. When an aircraft does
not conform, the complexity increases as more attention from ATC is required to
ensure a safe separation between aircraft.Comment: 15 pages, 20 figure
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