Safety validation of changes to an individual organization’s local ATM system has become common practice in Europe. However, the SESAR program is planning changes in air traffic operations in Europe that go much further than changes to a local ATM system. This paper identifies the issues on which safety validation approaches need extensions, in order to move from safety validation of changes to a local ATM system to safety validation in SESAR. Subsequently, it identifies approaches that address the identified extension needs. This way an integrated view is developed from the fragmented research results in this area.

In order to present a verification strategy, it is necessary to develop a common understanding of the role of requirements in the R&D process including a standard definition of requirements, which phase of the lifecycle they apply to, how they are used and who establishes them
This document serves to summarize the progress AP5 has made in expanding the definition and role of verification within context of concept development and to build on what has been learned through recommendations and next steps.

This document provides the final report (D3) for the EUROCONTROL project Role of Requirements in ATM Operational Concept Validation.

The project is concerned with an analysis of the role of requirements during the different lifecycle phases of Operational Concept Validation. To this end, a survey of current established practices in requirements engineering is performed. This work results in a number of recommendations concerning definition and interpretation of terms, application of relevant standards, and a strategy for the development of requirements and their evolution along the lifecycle as defined within the E-OCVM and OCVSD framework.

The European Operational Concept Validation Methodology (E-OCVM) is established in the EC/EUROCONTROL collaboration in ATM R&D. This study analyses further what is required or considered beneficial when a concept developed by R&D is validated and ready to be converted into an operational system. It addresses technical issues and provides detailed information for the follow-on of the E-OCVM process, namely the transition to industrialisation. It shows how the transfer of the results and data of the previous phases (mainly: documentation, simulations, prototypes and “know-how” gained) contribute to industrial development and implementation, resulting in operational benefits, i.e. increasing capacity. Regulatory and administrative issues (e.g. the acquisition process) are out of the scope of the study.

Under the auspices of Action Plan 9 (AP9), “Air Traffic Modelling of Operational Concepts”, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and EUROCONTROL sponsored a research project to determine the current state of Traffic Flow Management (TFM) simulation in fast-time modelling. The main objective of the 2005 AP9 TIM were developed to set a foundation for future research efforts. Objectives included the identification of the major differences in TFM practices between the U.S. and Europe: identification of existing fast-time TFM modelling capabilities, tools and modelling techniques; determination of any gaps between fast-time modelling capabilities to address current and future TFM operations and concepts, and the sponsoring organisations needs and requirements.

This document constitutes an input to a larger project that aims to propose and evaluate Augmented Reality (AR) tools for towers. One of the objectives of the project is to empirically evaluate the acceptability and usability of the AR technologies, with controlled experiments. Thus, this document intends to provide a general introduction on hypothesis testing, based on lessons learned during earlier experiments, on how to plan, design and carry out simple experiments.
This document was essentially written for students and for readers with very little knowledge of the topic. The content is simple and basic. All technical notions are fully explained and priority is given to practical suggestions rather than to theoretical explanations.

The four different assessments methodologies to be applied on the Overall ATM/CNS Target Architecture (OATA) logical model are defined. The assessments cover the following four areas: “Architecture Compliance with User Requirements”, “Architecture Structure”, “Architecture Compliance with Non-Functional Requirements” and “Architecture Tactics”.

Establishing and Automating Validation Reporting Templates in the E-OCVM Framework.

This report encompasses an analysis of the European Operational Concept Validation Methodology (E-OCVM) and related documentation, a description of reporting triggers within the life cycle of a concept, and a study about the implementation of automated interfaces for the input of the contents of Validation Reporting Templates into the Eurocontrol Validation Data Repository (VDR).

Furthermore, it includes a description of the contents of the Validation Reporting Templates which were established on the basis of aforementioned studies and are available separately from this report.

At the end of 2005 about 220 questionnaires where send out to explore how ATM R&D get access to R&D information and particular the role of the Validation Data Repository. 40 persons replied. There was a broad discussion of the results at the 2nd CAATS Workshop in February 2006.

The paper describes the validation process used in the Mediterranean Free Flight (MFF). MFF was a large, six years ATM research project, sponsored by the European Commission, that studied Operational Concepts and procedures for more efficient use of airspace through the delegation of tasks related to separation assurance. The validation approaches proposed in recent validation research initiatives, and in particular in MAEVA, have been modified, integrated and applied in MFF. The paper illustrates how the project Validation Objectives were identified and investigated, to judge the adequateness of the MFF Operational Concepts, and their relation with the overall ATM objectives.

CARE-INTEGRA studied various issues concerning the introduction of automation support tools for air traffic controllers in the current and future ATM environment. Activities taking place cover issues like defining metrics for safety, capacity, efficiency and environmental impact that have universal applicability across simulation environments and applying these metrics to various controller automation tool-sets in different scenarios.

CARE-ASAS: an action to study under which circumstances the use of Airborne Separation Assistance Systems would allow to transfer the responsibility of separation assurance from the Air Traffic Controller to the pilot. Activities have been perofrmed covering aspect like assessing the dimension of the problems to be encountered, defining an ASAS validation framework, defining factors influencing airborne separation minima and studying delegation issues and safety analysis of a number of ASAS applications envisaged to come in operation in the future. As of the end of 2004 the CARE/ASAS Action was terminated and further work continues in standard EUROCONTROL Domain and Programme work.

This document is the final report of the Eurocontrol “Validation Plan Template” project. It summarises the activity and findings of the project in designing and producing a series of templates for ATM validation plans.

This research effort addresses the long-standing problem of inconsistencies in defining ATM system performance across the international ATM community. These inconsistencies in how different researchers/organizations/etc. measure the ATM system performance often cause problems in decision making and target setting, and sometimes even problems in replicating the findings of an analysis.

The paper was developed in the context of FAA/EUROCONTROL collaboration AP5 and was presented at DASC 2004.

A Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) entitled "Presentation and capability assessment of various fast-time simulation models" was held in Paris, France on November 4-6, 2003. The objectives of the TIM were to provide developers with a forum to present their current and future modeling capabilities, identify and capture existing fast-time modeling capabilities, identify current and future modeling techniques, identify gaps in current fast-time modeling capabilities, and to identify sponsoring organizations needs and requirements. The results of the TIM are presented in this paper.

The "Master ATM European VAlidation Plan (MAEVA)" project was funded by the European Commission. Among others, it delivered a "Validation Guidance Handbook (VGH)". VGH is precursor of E-OCVM.
The MAEVA VGH is structured in 3 parts:
- Part I: Basic Steps for an ATM Validation Exercise
- Part II: Detailed Description of Steps
- Appendix: Additional Information

There is further guidance material for various topics.

The CEAMCA study has consisted in the comparison of the AGIE (in the US) and EACAC’2000 (in Europe) experiments and metrics. Both experiments are in the context ASAS concept deblopment.

In addition, the study has also investigated the INTEGRA metrics applied on EACAC. This comparison was based on initial work performed within CARE/ASAS #2.

The purpose of these Validation Guidelines is to explain why validation is necessary as a support to the process of deciding which directions to take towards the next generation ATM Systems. This document is principally aimed at programme and project managers who are tasked to develop Concepts to a level where they can be tested and evaluated.