Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PJ05 Remote Tower (Remote Tower for Multiple Airports)
Teaser
Providing air traffic control (ATC) for aerodromes is a high quality and safety critical job. It needs Air Traffic Controllers and solid minimal functional equipment resulting in high fixed costs to provide the service. Other costs e.g. for maintenance of systems and old tower...
Summary
Providing air traffic control (ATC) for aerodromes is a high quality and safety critical job. It needs Air Traffic Controllers and solid minimal functional equipment resulting in high fixed costs to provide the service. Other costs e.g. for maintenance of systems and old tower buildings also need to be considered resulting a critical cost benefit case for small to medium sized aerodromes. For example in rural regions where the airport is an important part of the infrastructure (often high speed trains are impossible due to low population numbers or geographical reasons) it is hardly possible to increase the turnover, the challenge is to reduce cost in order to keep these airports and to keep the regions flourishing for both businesses and people.
The Remote Tower concept has a possibility to tackle several of the challenges for airports across Europe. The concept is changing the possibility to provide a more service tailored and dynamic provision of Air Traffic Services (ATS). The concept relies on cost efficient optical camera solutions, whose video images are relayed to a remote facility, situated anywhere, to be displayed on a video presentation in order to enable the provision of ATS from that remote facility. The concept can host several aerodromes connected to the remote location enabling a Remote Tower Centre.
SESAR 2020 and PJ.05 has as main goal to develop the Multiple Remote Tower Concept and an efficient Remote Tower Centre. This is made through validations where one controller from a Multiple Remote Tower Module controls up to three aerodromes. A flexible allocation of aerodromes between controllers and Multiple Remote Tower Modules increases the efficiency within the Remote Tower Centre.
“Single†remote tower solutions have already been deployed through the predecessor SESAR 1 projects, but more significant impacts in flexibility and cost-efficiency are to be expected with “multiple†remote control out of a remote tower centre that was only partly covered so far. PJ05 will bring the multiple/centre concept to a higher maturity level. PJ.05 has several contributing European organisations: ANSPs, industries, research institutes and stakeholders provide their competence to broaden the results. The variety of partners and validation activities within PJ05 will help to reflect the variety of operational needs and technical solutions, which in the end of the project will consolidate into a broad SESAR2020 PJ05 solution available for European airports. The complete work is structured in a collaborative way throughout all work packages and will ensure the transfer of knowledge and know-how between all participants and external to SESAR2020 projects.
Work performed
The V2 datapack for PJ05.02 has been delivered. All documentation is based on four validation exercises that were run by different partners in different environments.
First Validations for PJ05.02 V3 and PJ05.03 V2 have been executed.
For all the details just refer to the submitted and approved Quarterly Progress Reports D1.7_QPR-5, D1.8_QPR-6, D1.9_QPR-7 & D1.10_QPR-8 in which the main results has already been reported and therefore has not to be repeated here again.
Final results
Expected results which will have a positive socio-economic impact refer to the overall objectives of PJ05: Maintaining ATS at small airports is often crucial to keep rural and remote regions vivid and attractive for people to inhabit. It also allows local industry to grow through continued operations within the regional economic network. SESAR research program PJ05 will go one step further SESAR1 validated concept of Remote Tower by reducing cost in a significant manner through multiple remote towers operations. In addition, ATS safety will be enhanced through state-of-the-art technologies such as augmented visual presentations increasing controller situational awareness under adverse conditions.
Website & more info
More info: http://www.remote-tower.eu.