Dec. 4, 2015

From 1 to 3 December 2015, the SESAR (Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research) Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) held its annual SESAR Innovation Days event, which was kindly hosted by the University of Bologna in Italy. The three-day event put ATM exploratory research under the spotlight through a series of workshops, presentations, research exhibitions and networking events.

SHOWCASING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

A total of 180 participants attended the event, which provided a strong pool of ATM scientific expertise and results while also offering ATM academia a tangible focus for their research efforts. A total of 27 papers were selected by a Programme Committee, chaired by Dirk Schaefer, Eurocontrol, which were clustered into several themes:

  • Liability and Regulation
  • Human Factors
  • Delays
  • HMI and Decision Support Tools
  • Human‐automation Collaboration Strategies
  • Economics
  • Applied Modelling & Optimization
  • Capacity and Airspace Design
  • Meteorology
  • Security

The papers and their related presentations can all be downloaded from the official SESAR Innovation Days website

RECOGNISING SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE

The event also provided young scientists to present their research work and also for one young scientist to receive the SESAR Young Scientist Award. This annual award includes a cheque for EUR 5,000 and aims to recognise and support young scientific excellence contributing to the modernisation of ATM.

This year, a wide variety of applications were received across a very broad range of topics. From these, three candidates were short-listed and the prizes were awarded to:

  • 1st place: Floris HERREMA for the Master Thesis “Compression on final approach and Time Based Separation (TBS) for optimized runway delivery” at TU Delft,
  • 2nd place: Milena STUDIC for the PhD Thesis “Developing a framework for a Total Apron Safety Management (TASM) tool at Imperial College London, and
  • 3rd place: Riccardo PATRIARCA for the PhD work on “Theoretical perspectives and real case models of Resilience Engineering in the ATM context” at the SAPIENZA University of Rome.

On presenting the prizes, David Bowen, Chief ATM, SESAR JU said “The quality from all the applicants of this year’s SESAR Young Scientist Award was extremely high. This year’s candidates presented innovative ideas which demonstrate that the future of European ATM Research is in safe hands.”

The planning for next year’s SESAR Innovation Days has already started and is targeted to take place in London from  29 November to 1 December in 2016 - stay tuned for more information…

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