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The objective of the Pioneer Support activity is, together with volunteer ANSPs, to help identify where improvements can be made to achieve the full potential of the pioneer implementations and capture lessons learned for the benefit of the wider European ATM community.
The aim is to:
- Speed up deployment of the full FASTI concept and the FASTI tools
- Develop win/win partnerships and develop a future model of operations (ANSP + Industry + EUROCONTROL working together)
- Deliver results
- Validate the FASTI concept
- Help Pioneers and Newcomers
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| There is a phased approach to Pioneer Support: |
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A participating ANSP can decide to just take part in Phase I or can follow on to Phase II.
During Phase I EUROCONTROL works with the ANSP to identify the ANSP's strategic objectives and then provide recommendations for change to achieve the full potential of the FASTI toolkit. These recommendations are based on assessments of their current operations and systems. At each stage the ANSP is required to endorse the EUROCONTROL report and assessment.
Other FASTI activities provide the required expertise to perform the assessments:
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Human Factors |
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Operational Implementation |
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ATS Systems |
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Once the ANSP endorses the suggested recommendations and decides to proceed to Phase II, i.e. the validation of the recommendations, EUROCONTROL can provide support to the ANSP and Industry to achieve successful upgrades to their local training and development platform in the shortest possible time and at best cost to validate the recommendations. This could include:
- Management assistance during procurement of system upgrades
- Possible contributions to the upgrading of validation platforms.
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Support to the ANSPs in the validation of potential solutions can come in a number of forms:
- Production of the Experimental Plan
- Assistance at the experiments
- Measurement, analysis and production of the final report
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One of the Pioneers, LFV (Sweden), has been through Phase I of the process and has moved into Phase II. In May 2006, Eurocontrol, with support of LFV, performed assessments of ATC operations and systems, as they related to FASTI concept and tools, at Stockholm and Malmo ACCs. The assessment reports provided around 40 recommendations of how LFV might improve their implementation of the FASTI tools.
Many of the recommendations would be addressed by the future planning of LFV as part of COOPANS group. Of the remaining recommendations, three distinct topics covering improvements to MTCD were identified for possible early implementation, subject to favourable validation results. The selected topics comprised the ability to tune MTCD parameters per sector, the use of the measured (tracked) ground speed to improve trajectory prediction, and the filtering of nuisance warnings from the planner’s conflict and risk display.
This became Project North.
Skyguide (Switzerland) has also been through Phase I of the process and has decided not to continue to Phase II. However, they have the outputs of Phase I to assist them in their future developments.
ENAV (Italy) and MATSA (Malta) are currently coming to the end of Phase I. They will then proceed to Phase II in Project South.
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The purpose of Project North is to provide an increase in sector capacity and improve flight efficiency with maintained safety by development and use of MTCD at LFV. System 2000 at Malmo and Stockholm ACCs has been assessed and a number of improvements recommended.
Project North was established, comprising a collaborative effort between Thales, LFV, Eurocontrol and Think Research, to perform an initial validation of the recommended improvements via real-time simulations.
LFV is acting as the representative of COOPANS which was formed by LFV, IAA and NAVIAIR to organise convergence of their needs and accelerate the upgrades of their respective equipment. This, along with the involvement of FINAVIA, provides an opportunity for the FASTI programme to reach its objective of standardisation and to accelerate the implementation and deployment of controller system support tools, with the support of Thales Air Systems.
Five Swedish controllers participated in a two-week trial which tool place in Malmö in September 2008. The goals of the improvements were to improve the accuracy of the trajectories, add flexibility in the MTCD parameterization and remove some clutter caused by nuisance conflicts. The second week of the trials concentrated on investigating a Group Sector Planning concept and working methods- using the MTCD improvements as enablers.
Exercises were performed in two sessions, the first looking at these improvements in normal operations in two sectors; the second session validated these improvements within a concept of a group-sector planner (where a number of sectors are served by a single planner controller).
The software used for the simulations was that of the operational system at Stockholm and Malmo ACCs, upgraded to support the recommended improvements. Although it wasn’t always possible to draw unequivocal conclusions due to some constraints imposed by the simulation environment as well as technical issues both in the introduced functions and in the legacy functions, some important indicators were obtained.
Within the simulation environment, the use of measured ground speed greatly increased the accuracy of the trajectories which in turn lead to appreciably better performance of the MTCD.
The simulation exercises exposed a number of deficiencies in the trialed method of filtering nuisance warnings. These concerned team working issues between the executive controller and planner controller, insufficient support to the executive controller, and over-filtering of planning conflicts.
Application of the Group Sector Planner (GSP) concept was considered possible in low to medium traffic levels, providing little coordination with military ATC was needed. Use of a GSP as a manning option was seen as providing a new intermediate step and not as a replacement for the traditional EC/PC manning.
Full details of the trial are provided in the Validation Report (see below).
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A number of lessons were learnt. These can be viewed by clicking on the buttons below.
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FASTI Pioneer Support Project North drew to a successful conclusion with an Open Day in Malmö ACC on November 13th 2008, bringing together Service Providers from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Malta, Sweden and Switzerland.
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| | Pioneer Project South launched - From left to right: G Ferrara, V Melgiovanni, M Zacchei, M O’Keeffe, C Brain, R Ferrari, I Prissinotti |
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In Autumn 2007 a significant milestone was reached in the FASTI Programme Pioneer Support when ENAV, MATS-Malta and SELEX SI agreed to work together on a joint project called Project South in which the FASTI programme team will facilitate a process of making existing tools "fit for purpose".
A number of Southern European ANSPs (i.e. Italy, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Macedonia, Malta, Romania and Turkey) have similar objectives, environments and systems. They also all share an expectation of increase in traffic demand for the next 10 to 15 years.
Project South will perform preoperational validation of MTCD, MONA and SYSCO at ENAV and MATSA.
SELEX SI is the industrial partner providing the validation platform software to Project South and is prototyping the requested modifications. The intention will be to share the results and benefits of Project South with other ANSPs having SELEX systems to speed up implementation and reduce risks.
The intended outcome from Project South will be a validated User Requirements document which reflects the required improvements in MTCD, MONA and SYSCO. This will be used as a basis for the development of a Deployment Plan for the enhanced version of the tools. Industry will be in a position to begin development of new versions of MTCD and MONA which are based on a set of validated user requirements.
The FASTI programme will use Project South to validate the FASTI Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), refine the Operational Concept and capture lessons learned.
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Author:
Last validation: 11/05/2009
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