Realtime Noise Exposure Prediction Model for an Aircraft Controller Assistance System

Die stetig wachsende Zahl an Flugzeugen und Flugbewegungen an den grossen internationalen Verkehrsflughäfen führen in deren Umgebung zu einer wachsenden Lärmbelästigung. In den letzten dreißig Jahren ermöglichten viele technische Fortschritte, in Form von Lärmreduzierungen an der Quelle, operationellen Maßnahmen bei Starts- und Landungen und administrativen Vorgaben eine deutliche Reduzierung des Fluglärms. Ein Anflugplanungssystem, das am Institut für Flugführung des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) in Braunschweig entwickelt wurde, unterstützt Fluglotsen bei der Abwicklung des ankommenden Flugverkehrs. Unter Berücksichtigung unterschiedlicher Randbedingungen, zu denen Sicherheitsabstände, Ankunftszeiten und Landebahnzuweisungen gehören, berechnet das Planungssystem für alle Flugzeuge konfliktfreie Anflugtrajektorien. Dabei existieren üblicherweise mehrere gültige Trajektorien, die die vorgegebenen Randbedingungen erfüllen. Dieser Umstand wurde genutzt, um ein bevölkerungsabhängiges Fluglärmkriterium in die Planung zu integrieren. In dieser Arbeit wurde ein Echtzeit-Lärmabschätzungsalgorithmus entwickelt, der es dem System ermöglicht, alle geplanten Anflugtrajektorien hinsichtlich des zu erwartenden Fluglärms zu bewerten. Dazu wurden international verwendete Lärmberechnungsverfahren an die besonderen Anforderungen der 4D-Trajektorien des Anflugplanungssystems 4D-Planer angepasst und für eine deutlich schnellere Berechnung vereinfacht. Trotzdem werden die atmosphärischen und meteorologischen Bedingungen, eine Bevölkerungsverteilung und die Topographie der Erdoberfläche bei den Berechnungen berücksichtigt. Das Bewertungsergebnis ist jeweils eine bevölkerungsabhängige Flugroutenbelastungskennzahl für alle geplanten Anflugtrajektorien. Auf diese Weise ist es möglich, für alle ankommenden Flugzeuge die hinsichtlich der Fluglärmbelastung am besten bewertete Trajektorie auszuwählen und dem Lotsen für den Landeanflug vorzuschlagen.The growing number of aircraft and flights at major international airports leads to increasing noise complaints in the vicinity of these airports. During the last 30 years many technological innovations like noise reduction at the source, operational measures for arrivals and departures, and regulatory measures made a reduction of air traffic noise possible. An arrival planning system developed by the Institute of Flight Guidance, German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Braunschweig, assists the air traffic controller in organizing the multitude of arrivals. Taking various constraints into account, e.g. separation criteria, target times, and runway allocation, the planning system calculates conflict-free trajectories for all arriving aircraft. Usually, there exist more than one trajectory, which complies with all constraints mentioned. Thus, it is proposed to add a population depending noise criterion to the planning function. In this work a real-time noise calculation algorithm was developed which enables the system to rate planned approach trajectories in terms of noise dispersion. For this purpose, international standard aircraft noise calculation rules were adapted to special demands on 4D trajectories of the arrival planning system 4D-Planner and simplified for significant faster calculations. Additionally, atmospheric and meteorological conditions, population distribution and earth topography were taken into account. The result is a population depending flight path exposure index for each trajectory planned for an approaching aircraft. This way, it is possible to choose the best-rated trajectory in terms of noise for every aircraft and suggest it to the controller

Air Traffic Management Abbreviation Compendium

As in all fields of work, an unmanageable number of abbreviations are used today in aviation for terms, definitions, commands, standards and technical descriptions. This applies in general to the areas of aeronautical communication, navigation and surveillance, cockpit and air traffic control working positions, passenger and cargo transport, and all other areas of flight planning, organization and guidance. In addition, many abbreviations are used more than once or have different meanings in different languages. In order to obtain an overview of the most common abbreviations used in air traffic management, organizations like EUROCONTROL, FAA, DWD and DLR have published lists of abbreviations in the past, which have also been enclosed in this document. In addition, abbreviations from some larger international projects related to aviation have been included to provide users with a directory as complete as possible. This means that the second edition of the Air Traffic Management Abbreviation Compendium includes now around 16,500 abbreviations and acronyms from the field of aviation

Two decades of numerical modelling to understand long term fluvial archives: Advances and future perspectives

The development and application of numerical models to investigate fluvial sedimentary archives has increased during the last decades resulting in a sustained growth in the number of scientific publications with keywords, 'fluvial models', 'fluvial process models' and 'fluvial numerical models'. In this context we compile and review the current contributions of numerical modelling to the understanding of fluvial archives. In particular, recent advances, current limitations, previous unexpected results and future perspectives are all discussed. Numerical modelling efforts have demonstrated that fluvial systems can display non-linear behaviour with often unexpected dynamics causing significant delay, amplification, attenuation or blurring of externally controlled signals in their simulated record. Numerical simulations have also demonstrated that fluvial records can be generated by intrinsic dynamics without any change in external controls. Many other model applications demonstrate that fluvial archives, specifically of large fluvial systems, can be convincingly simulated as a function of the interplay of (palaeo) landscape properties and extrinsic climate, base level and crustal controls. All discussed models can, after some calibration, produce believable matches with real world systems suggesting that equifinality - where a given end state can be reached through many different pathways starting from different initial conditions and physical assumptions - plays an important role in fluvial records and their modelling. The overall future challenge lies in the development of new methodologies for a more independent validation of system dynamics and research strategies that allow the separation of intrinsic and extrinsic record signals using combined fieldwork and modelling

Application of Severe Weather Nowcasting to Case Studies in Air Traffic Management

Effective and time-efficient aircraft assistance and guidance in severe weather environments remains a challenge for air traffic control. Air navigation service providers around the globe could greatly benefit from specific and adapted meteorological information for the controller position, helping to reduce the increased workload induced by adverse weather. The present work proposes a radar-based nowcasting algorithm providing compact meteorological information on convective weather near airports for introduction into the algorithms intended to assist in air-traffic management. The use of vertically integrated liquid density enables extremely rapid identification and short-term prediction of convective regions that should not be traversed by aircraft, which is an essential requirement for use in tactical controller support systems. The proposed tracking and nowcasting method facilitates the anticipation of the meteorological situation around an airport. Nowcasts of centroid locations of various approaching thunderstorms were compared with corresponding radar data, and centroid distances between nowcasted and observed storms were computed. The results were analyzed with Method for the Object-Based Evaluation from the Model Evaluation tools software (MET-10.0.1, Developmental Testbed Center, Boulder, CO, US) and later integrated into an assistance arrival manager software, showing the potential of this approach for automatic air traffic assistance in adverse weather scenarios

Forecasting the weather to assist ATC and ATM operations

In EUROCONTROLS's recent summary report on Climate Changes Risks for European Aviation, several weather-related impacts were highlighted. There is a strong relation between highly impacting weather events and disruptions to the aviation network resulting in additional fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. In Europe, severe weather is responsible for up to 7.5% of the total en-route delays. In this respect, the H2020 Satellite-borne and IN-situ Observations to Predict The Initiation of Convection for ATM (SINOPTICA) project aims to demonstrate that very high-resolution and very short-range numerical weather forecasts, benefiting from the assimilation of radar data, in-situ weather stations, GNSS and lightning data, can improve the prediction of extreme weather events to the benefit of Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Air Traffic Control (ATC) operations. The assimilation of radar, GNSS, and lightning data shows a positive impact on the forecast of the convective cells for the four selected severe weather events. Moreover, two radar-based nowcasting strategies, PhaSt and RaNDeVIL, are tested to predict storm structures. Both methods are able to follow the more intense cells (VIL > 10 kg/m2) in all the case studies, as shown by the MODE results and the eye-ball verification The forecasts are used in an arrival management system (AMAN) to compute 4D trajectories around convective areas, integrate the affected aircraft into the arrival sequence, and assist air traffic controllers in implementing the approaches through just in time advisories and dynamic weather displays. With the help of real traffic scenarios and different weather models, diverse approach planning strategies are evaluated

Is an NWP-Based Nowcasting System Suitable for Aviation Operations?

The growth of air transport demand expected over the next decades, along with the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfalls and severe storms due to climate change, will pose a tough challenge for air traffic management systems, with implications for flight safety, delays and passengers. In this context, the Satellite-borne and IN-situ Observations to Predict The Initiation of Convection for ATM (SINOPTICA) project has a dual aim, first to investigate if very short-range high-resolution weather forecast, including data assimilation, can improve the predictive capability of these events, and then to understand if such forecasts can be suitable for air traffic management purposes. The intense squall line that affected Malpensa, the major airport by passenger traffic in northern Italy, on 11 May 2019 is selected as a benchmark. Several numerical experiments are performed with a Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model using two assimilation techniques, 3D-Var in WRF Data Assimilation (WRFDA) system and a nudging scheme for lightning, in order to improve the forecast accuracy and to evaluate the impact of assimilated different datasets. To evaluate the numerical simulations performance, three different verification approaches, object-based, fuzzy and qualitative, are used. The results suggest that the assimilation of lightning data plays a key role in triggering the convective cells, improving both location and timing. Moreover, the numerical weather prediction (NWP)-based nowcasting system is able to produce reliable forecasts at high spatial and temporal resolution. The timing was found to be suitable for helping Air Traffic Management (ATM) operators to compute alternative landing trajectories

Providing Information by Resource- Constrained Data Analysis

The Collaborative Research Center SFB 876 (Providing Information by Resource-Constrained Data Analysis) brings together the research fields of data analysis (Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery in Data Bases, Machine Learning, Statistics) and embedded systems and enhances their methods such that information from distributed, dynamic masses of data becomes available anytime and anywhere. The research center approaches these problems with new algorithms respecting the resource constraints in the different scenarios. This Technical Report presents the work of the members of the integrated graduate school

Die Automatisierung der Flugsicherung

Die Tätigkeit als Fluglotsin oder Fluglotse gehört heute zu einer der verantwortungsvollsten Aufgaben in unserer Gesellschaft. Sie erfordert eine permanente hohe Konzentration, ein enormes Gespür für räumliche und zeitliche Dynamiken sowie eine sichere Beherrschung der verwendeten technischen Ausrüstung. Indem sie Freigaben für Strecken, Höhen und Geschwindigkeiten erteilen, ohne die kein Pilot sein Flugzeug bewegen darf, koordinieren und überwachen Fluglotsen die Lufträume und den Verkehr auf den Flughäfen. Neue Technologien wie Remote Tower, Virtuelle Center, Flight-Centric Operations und sektorlose Flugsicherung sowie der schnell wachsende Markt und die Verfügbarkeit von Drohnen stellen sowohl für die Flugsicherung allgemein als auch für jeden einzelnen Fluglotsen neue Herausforderungen dar. Eine Automatisierung der Flugsicherungsprozesse, oder auch nur eines Teils davon, bedeuten in den nächsten Jahren eine der größten Revolutionen in der Geschichte der Flugsicherung. Die Europäische Union rechnet damit, dass in den kommenden Jahren insbesondere die Technologie der Künstlichen Intelligenz die Arbeit der Piloten, Fluglotsen und dem allgemeinen Luftfahrtpersonal erheblich unterstützen wird, indem sie den Betrieb optimieren und die Arbeitsbelastung, die unter diesen Bedingungen entsteht, durch digitale Assistenten und die Automatisierung der Flugbahnverwaltung reduziert. Bei der Automatisierung handelt es sich jedoch um eine langsame, Schritt für Schritt betriebene Entwicklung, in dem zunächst einzelne Prozesse durch technische Systeme übernommen werden, die zuvor vom Menschen erledigt werden mussten. Funktionieren diese zuverlässig, so können erste Prozessketten zusammengefasst werden, für die der Mensch zunächst noch der Initiator ist, später jedoch mehr und mehr in die Rolle eines Überwachers wechseln wird. Mit fortschreitender Automatisierung wird der Lotse immer mehr seiner ursprünglichen Aufgaben an Systeme übergeben, so dass er bei seiner Tätigkeit merklich entlastet wird. Sobald dies geschehen ist, wird aus dem Lotsenteam, so wie wir es heute kennen, ein Einzelarbeitsplatz werden. Bei den Single Controller Operations ist ein Lotse dann genau für einen Sektor verantwortlich. Dies gilt insbesondere bei einem weiteren Wachstum des Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Verkehrs, denn die Integration der unbemannten Luftfahrzeuge in die stadtnahen Lufträume des bestehenden Flugverkehrs ohne Überlastung der Fluglotsen, kann grundsätzlich nur mit einem sehr hohen Grad an Automatisierung erfolgen. Deshalb ist es für die Forschung essentiell, sich bei der Entwicklung neuer Technologien und Verfahren für die Luftfahrt immer auch Gedanken zur Wahrung der geforderten und benötigten Sicherheitsstandards zu machen und jede mögliche Änderung im Arbeitsablauf durch kleine, langsame und stets nachvollziehbare Änderungsschritte transparent zu gestalten