Project description
New technology to prevent bird strikes
Bird strikes in aviation are a dangerous daily event. These collisions are not only resulting in massive costs and delays for passengers, airlines, and airports but also can have a fatal outcome. Danish company AscendXYZ has worked with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) on a solution that integrates bird radars with Earth observation data to tackle the issue. The EU-funded AARN project will develop the advanced prototype solutions developed by ESA into a market-ready service. It will perform radar hazard measurements of bird activity and make the information available to industry stakeholders, including airlines, pilots and airports. The technology will reshape bird strike prevention by facilitating a plethora of data to airlines on bird activity near airports – creating for the first time in the industry a network of connected systems.
Objective
An estimated 20.000 collisions between aircrafts and birds are expected to happen in Europe in 2019. Resulting in massive costs and delays for passengers, airlines, and airports. We can remember serious accidents as the “Miracle on the Hudson” and, recently, the Ethiopian Airlines crash resulting in 157 fatalities, where U.S. aviation authorities regard a collision with one or more birds as the most likely reason for the MCAS sensor failure that lead to the crash. In the project, AscendXYZ will mature the advanced prototype solutions developed under European Space Agency (ESA) Business Applications program into market-ready service performing radar hazard measurements of bird activity and make the information available to the relevant industry stakeholders (Airlines, Pilots, Air Navigation Service Providers and Airports). The technology will reshape bird strike prevention by facilitating a plethora of data to airlines on bird activity nearby airports – creating for the first time in the industry a network of connected systems. Participating in this pan-European and global project are some of the largest airlines and airports in the world. The expected project outcome is a reduction in the number of bird strikes, leading to a significant improvement of flight safety as well as a positive business impact for the airlines to the benefit of all industry stakeholders and passengers.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technologyradar
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
2200 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.