Airport Safety Nets The project “Airport Safety Nets” aims at delivering the following SESAR Solutions: Enhanced Airport Safety Nets for Controllers: Safety alerts for controllers: the system detects potential and actual conflicting situations, incursions and non-conformance to procedures or ATC clearances, involving mobiles (and stationary traffic) on runways, taxiways and in the apron/stand/gate area as well as unauthorized / unidentified traffic. Conformance monitoring safety net for Pilots: Conformance monitoring safety alerts for the flight crew (either generated by the on-board system or uplinked from the controller alerting system): the system detects non-compliance with airport configuration (e.g. closed runway, non-compliant taxiway, restricted area…) as well as non-conformance to procedure or clearances. Traffic Alerts for pilots for airports operations: The on-board system detects potential and actual risk of collision with other traffic during runway and taxiway operations and provides the flight crew with the appropriate alert. Safety support tools for runway excursions: The system provides support and alerts to the controllers and/or pilots in case of risk of runway excursion (take-off and landing). Runway excursions represent the most frequent accident category for worldwide accidents for the 2004-2009 period (IATA 2004-2009 RE Analysis report). Although a number of actions have been taken in the past to reduce the number of runway incursions, prevent collisions on the apron and taxiway with traffic and fixed obstacles, there is still potential to improve safety, especially as the airport surface becomes more congested. Enhanced safety nets for controllers in particular require improvements regarding conflict resolution functions and integration of weather aspects. There is also a need to consider airports with limited or no surface surveillance capabilities. Traffic alerts provided by the on-board system to the flight crews need to be extended in case of a risk of collision with an aircraft or a ground vehicle on runway and taxiways.Finally, safety nets are the most demanding applications in terms of core surveillance performances. There is a need to further work on surveillance in order to reduce the false alerts rate including the study of possible new sources such as visual docking (when aircraft are at the Gate and current surveillance is an issue), or video-based surveillance. Improve ground and air safety levels.
