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Validation Activities at the EEC |
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Validation is the process through which the EEC provides evidence to its stakeholders that an existing or future operational concept does, or does not, satisfy their acceptance criteria. Through this process, the EEC participates in the improvement of many aspects of the ATM system, such as improving safety, reducing delays, reducing costs, or reducing the environmental impact of the system and is thus a major actor in the creation of a Single European Sky.
At the EEC, validation activities are conducted within the different research areas by multi-disciplinary teams whose expertise covers operational, safety, and human factors matters, experimental design and analysis, and diverse engineering sciences.
The EEC has developed, and uses, a large set of validation techniques and tools; these tools are available to EUROCONTROL member states through partnerships.
Initially mainly focused on the use of both real-time and fast-time simulators to evaluate new operational concepts, the EEC now applies a large spectrum of validation techniques, methods, and tools including judgemental techniques, fast-time simulations, rapid-prototyping, small-scale and large-scale real-time simulations, shadow-mode trials, and live trials. The EEC also participates early on during the design phase of operational concepts and later on during their implementation to monitor and ensure that they behave in accordance to their original specifications.
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Improving the validation of operational concepts today |
European Operational Concept Validation Methodology |
“Are we building the right ATM system?” is the question that each EEC ATM validation activity is trying to answer. This question should be addressed in a coherent way not only within projects but also within programmes and should be answered by following a global methodology.
The EEC has developed, and now maintains, such a methodology. It is called the European Operational Concept Validation Methodology (E-OCVM) and will ensure both that existing knowledge is capitalised on and that best practices are applied during the whole development life cycle of the validation of operational concepts. The E-OCVM will be applied progressively not only within all EEC projects but also in those external projects where EEC participation is required. The application of this methodology guarantees the quality of the EEC validation activities.
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More information about the Operational Concept Validation methodology. |
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Dissemination of Validation Best Practices |
To foster the validation activities in Europe, co-operation and collaboration are necessary. Both best validation practices and results are now made available to all interested European parties via the Validation Data Repository (VDR).
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The Validation Data Repository. |
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Improving the validation of operational concepts tomorrow |
Capturing stakeholders' acceptance criteria |
“Are we addressing the right problems?” is the question that should be asked before expending too much effort on validating what could be inappropriate solutions. The work produced by the Strategic Performance Framework (SPF) team indicates the areas of interest that need to be addressed during the validation activities.
To improve the validation process further, it is also necessary to capture the Stakeholders' acceptance criteria.
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Measuring ATM system performance |
“What have we achieved?” “What are the benefits?” The development of ways to measure the performance of the ATM system will allow us to evaluate the progress made. The impact of the introduction of, for example, a new tool on the overall ATM system and, in particular, on the human actors should be measured with rigour. Several EUROCONTROL projects are addressing these issues. For more information, have a look at the work being done by the Safety Research team, the Human Factors Lab team, and by the COCA and INTEGRA projects.
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The Safety Research activities at the EEC. |
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Information about the COCA project. |
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EEC validation activities contribute to EUROCONTROL and European validation activities. The EEC will develop training material and conduct training sessions around the application of the E-OCVM:
- Within the EUROCONTROL agency: the E-OCVM has been selected as the validation methodology that will drive the development of the European Air Traffic Management Master Plan.
- With other R&D centres: We are promoting and sharing validation best practices with our partners through the EC's 5th and 6th Framework projects.
- With the FAA: In the context of the FAA/EUROCONTROL Cooperative R&D Action Plan 5, a yearly workshop is organised to exchange best/good practices about the validation of operational concepts. The results of those workshops are recorded in the Operational Concept Validation Strategy document”.
- Within SESAR: In the context of the SESAR D5 and D6 activities, the E-OCVM and EEC validation expertise has made a strong contribution. Systems engineering methods will see concept validation as an integrated process.
link to D5 and D6.
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EUROCONTROL, in conjunction with the EC, has established a Validation Forum to support the ATM R&D community in applying the European OCVM.
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The Validation Forum |
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You will find support material and guidance to validation and will be able to pass your feedback on the site and the contents to the Validation Core Team.
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If you would like more information, contact:
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Nigel
Makins
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EEC Validation Co-ordinator
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Author:
Last validation: 17/04/2008
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