Enhanced situational awareness through video integration with ADS-B surveillance infrastructure on airports

ENVISION is an ATM-application-oriented research project, under the SESAR 2020 Programme “Enabling Aviation Infrastructure: CNS” topic, which aims to make use of technical progress in CCTV cameras, LIDAR technology and image processing techniques, and to take advantage of reduced equipment costs, to provide regional and local airports with safe and affordable surface movement surveillance capabilities for air traffic control (ATC) and (airport collaborative decision-making) A-CDM services.

EUROCONTROL is responsible for the development of the concept of operations for ENVISION Surveillance and ENVISION regional A-CDM.

The constant growth of air traffic will put regional and local airports under ever more pressure to increase their capacity. However, safety and efficiency gains – made possible by the deployment of A-SMGCS systems – currently remain out of reach for most small to medium-sized platforms because of prohibitive infrastructure costs. Owing to the intrinsic attributes of current surveillance technologies and airport surface coverage constraints, airports are required to deploy complex and costly infrastructures involving multiple sensors of various kinds, such as ADS-B, MLAT and SMR.

In a stepwise approach at two airports, the consortium will evaluate and demonstrate the operational, technical and economic feasibility of implementing CCTV and LIDAR technology to complement ADS-B on the airport surface by providing identification and positioning data in A-SMGCS. Additionally, the project will assess the benefits of using this technical solution to feed A-CDM milestones and provide a surveillance display for airport stakeholders. Solutions should be delivered from 2024 onwards.

Increased safety, efficiency at reduced cost.

ALTYS, ENAC, GRAFFICA