Efficient services and infrastructure delivery

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

This demonstration will address common support function which would allow temporary provision of some services or information such as Flight plan or radar information in order to ensure continuity in the delivery of efficient ATS services in case of major technical failure at one of the ACCs.

With reference to the SJU Annual Work Programme 2016, this topic covers Section 3.5.4, sub Work Area 2.1 topic e).

As the airspace of Europe becomes ever more congested, the ability of the Network to absorb the disruption resulting from a significant loss of capacity for numerous reasons, including technical failure, degrades. This has the potential to lead to widespread delays and eventually cancellations to flights which result in unacceptable disruption and unexpected extra costs for airlines and passengers alike.

The aim of this topic is to demonstrate examples of how resilience in ATM service provision can be increased through the geographical decoupling of the ATM Data Service Providers from the Air Traffic Service Units so that, in the event of failure, ATM data services could be provided from a remote location. This concept is known as ‘virtualisation’.

Projects should build on the introductory work conducted within SESAR 1 and SESAR Industrial Research project PJ.16 (‘CWP/HMI’). However, while the latter will be investigating the full scope of the Virtual Centre concept, projects awarded under this topic will have to identify and demonstrate quick-wins that will help to provide valuable insight and experience with the concept of virtualisation, and so provide ‘lessons-learned’ to the wider investigation and developments conducted in SESAR2020.

The services identified as candidates for virtualisation are as follows:

• Flight Data Management;

• Flight Data Distribution;

• Coordination and Transfer;

• Correlation Management;

• Correlation Distribution ;

• Arrival Sequence Distribution and Management (AMAN);

• Monitoring Aids (MONA) Distribution;

• Safety Nets (SNET) Distribution and Management;

• Medium Term Conflict Detection (MTCD) and Management;

Projects should be conducted by at least two ANSPs to develop a common contingency demonstration environment to demonstrate improved continuity of efficient ATM service provision, in high-level en-route airspace, in the event of a major technical failure at one of Europe’s major Air Traffic Control Centres (ACCs). The project will investigate how virtualisation could be used in this regard.

Projects will consider and evaluate the three streams of the virtualisation concept, reporting in detail on each within the scope of the demonstration. The three streams are:

• Business;

• Operational; and

• Technical.

Output from the project should include observations and recommendations for procedural, operational, technological, regulatory and standardisation activities that would be necessary to enable the wider implementation of virtualisation within the ATM domain.

The demonstration activities shall cover the full demonstration lifecycle. This includes development of the concept of the proposed demonstrations, production of all the documentation related to the demonstration (most notably including the demonstration plan and the demonstration report), and results dissemination and communication activities. The demonstrations have to be backed by an appropriate project management structure that is centred on timely delivery, including notably robust quality and risk management.

ATM service provision can be severely impacted by serious technical failures and increased resilience of this service provision would provide significant economic benefits to aviation stakeholders and the communities they support.