Air traffic
controllers at Slovenia Control’s Ljubljana Area
Control Centre have successfully handled shadow
operations in Slovenian airspace using data
processed remotely at EUROCONTROL’s Maastricht Upper
Area Control Centre (MUAC) as part of the “ATM Data
as a Service” (ADaaS) project.
'ATM Data as a
Service' (ADaaS), a three-year project between
Slovenia Control and EUROCONTROL’s MUAC, aims to
develop and deploy a prototype to demonstrate that
ATM data can be provided from an operational ATM
environment as a service to one or more civil air
traffic service units (ATSUs) by a single
distributed ATM system.
The project, which
contributes to the Single European Sky by deploying
new technologies and best practices, is co-financed
by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)
to the tune of EUR 2.45 million.
|
Air
traffic controllers at Slovenia
Control’s Ljubljana Area Control Centre
handle shadow operations in Slovenian
airspace using data processed remotely
at the Maastricht Upper Area Control
Centre. |
In June 2016,
Phase 1 of the joint project was successfully
completed. The expert teams from both air navigation
service providers were able within a limited
time-period to overcome the operational and
technical challenges inherent in such an innovative
approach in the ATM environment. The next step,
successfully completed in March 2017, was to
demonstrate the use of an open interface between the
MUAC flight data processing system and Slovenia
Control’s controller working positions/human-machine
interface. Data processed remotely at MUAC was
displayed and used on three different types of
controller working positions in the Slovenia Control
simulator during the second phase of shadow
operations. The human machine interface’s software
and tools were adapted to communicate with the newly
developed gateway, acting as a mediator and allowing
an open interface by applying system-wide
information management (SWIM) principles.
The final phase of
the demonstration (Phase 3 of the ADaaS
Demonstrator), planned for the third quarter of
2017, will involve a distributed flight data
processing system in two locations (MUAC and
Slovenia Control) and can serve controller working
positions/human-machine interfaces either remotely
or locally. Phase 3 will provide essential data on
how to deploy a state-of-the-art data centre from
which an ATM data service provider (ADSP) can
deliver services to ATSUs with proper contingency
and disaster recovery. |