News

Assessing progress towards achieving interoperability and harmonisation across ICAO/EUR

Airplane taking off from airport runway

Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBUs) are the building blocks of ICAO’s Global Air Navigation Plan, which describes the steps needed to achieve global ATM interoperability and harmonisation. The ICAO-EUROCONTROL ASBU implementation monitoring report for the ICAO European Region, the fifth edition of which (covering 2018) has just been published, provides a valuable single view of all progress made by each of the 55 ICAO/EUR countries in implementing ASBU Block 0 Modules.

Through the Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBUs), Member States work with ICAO, their ANSPs and industry stakeholders to advance their air navigation capabilities and systems based on specific operational requirements, and to implement them in a harmonised and timely fashion to maximise the capacity, safety and efficiency of air traffic.

The ASBU Implementation Monitoring Report, developed over the years by EUROCONTROL in close cooperation and partnership with ICAO EUR, provides a comprehensive Implementation Monitoring Report on the GANP covering ASBU “Block 0” modules. (Block 0 Modules is the ICAO category denoting potential operational improvements that are already available, as opposed to Block 1 and 2 modules, which have a medium to long-term development framework). The report contains a dashboard that summarises implementation progress, and an outlook (covering 2020 and 2021) detailing prospective future implementation dates reported by States.

The harmonised approach spares ECAC States from needing to make additional investments in reporting, meeting their reporting needs while eliminating the cost of double reporting to aviation stakeholders. The report draws on existing monitoring mechanisms (extracting information from EUROCONTROL’s well-established LSSIP – Local Single Sky ImPlementation mechanism – process, and from the ATM Master Plan Level 3), while keeping the reporting burden low for the 9 other non-ECAC States in the EUR Region burden, who are called on to complete a dedicated questionnaire).

ICAO’s European Aviation System Planning Group (EASPG) uses the report to monitor and analyse implementation progress across the 55 countries contained within the ICAO/EUR region. The fifth edition of the report was endorsed by States at the EASPG’s December 2019 meeting in Paris.

As of the end of 2018, the implementation status of ASBU Block 0 modules looked as follows across ICAO/EUR:

The chart shows the 14 Block 0 modules that have been identified by States as applicable to their circumstances – States’ operational requirements vary, and ICAO works with them to help each determine exactly which capabilities they should have in place).

For each module, the completion rate is indicated, which reflects the percentage among those States intending to implement (while excluding in each case those States that have indicated that that particular module is not applicable). Currently, implementation completion spans a wide range from 84% for ACAS (Airborne Collision Avoidance Systems) down to 6% for DATM (Digital ATM).

For more information, read the full report.

Latest highlights

Marouan Chida
Article

The European ATM Master Plan and EUROCONTROL’s role in wider ATM transformation

ECTL/ICAO ASBU Implementation Monitoring Report
News

7th EUROCONTROL/ICAO ASBU Implementation Monitoring Report offers best-in-class monitoring of ASBU implementation

LSSIP+ 2021 event Europa
News

LSSIP+ - Joining forces with the SESAR Deployment Manager to ensure a unified repository for ATM implementation infrastructure reporting

2021 Local Single Sky Implementation+ (LSSIP+) event

Airplane on a runway
News

Assessing progress in ICAO ASBU module implementation

Airplanes flying near each other
News

2020 LSSIP event: A single value chain & common planning and reporting process that drives cost-effectiveness