A new wave of SESAR exploratory research activities has got underway aiming to foster new ideas and knowledge transfer in air traffic management (ATM) in Europe.

The activities include a knowledge transfer network to encourage collaborative research on future and emerging innovative ideas, expertise on ATM. Satellite signal jamming, improved airport surface movements using existing surveillance technologies and models to improve traffic predictability are just some of the topics that the selected projects will address. The aim is to feed the results of these projects into the SESAR 2020 industrial and demonstration activities.

Launched within the framework of the SESAR 2020 research and innovation programme, the projects will run for two years and will benefit from co-funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 budget. The projects bring together universities, start-ups, manufacturers, service providers from across Europe (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Republic of Serbia, Spain, The Netherlands, and the UK) as well as Eurocontrol and the European Aviation Safety Agency.

Project Name

Description

Participating organisations

Engage

The network aims to stimulate the transfer of exploratory research results towards ATM application-oriented research. The network will establish a knowledge hub, in which members across the research community are continuously involved. This will include an observatory and undertake the role of devising and maintaining the long-term roadmap development of innovative and interdisciplinary ATM concepts beyond SESAR 2020. The knowledge hub will be the one-stop, go-to source for information in Europe.

Innaxis Research Institute
Univerzitet u Beogradu - Saobracajni fakultet Technische Universiteit Delft (TU Delft)
Frequentis
Università degli studi di Trieste
University of Westminster (Coordinator)
Eurocontrol
European Aviation Safety Agency

 

EVOAtm -Evolutionary ATM. A modelling framework to assess the impact of ATM evolutions

The projects aims to build a framework to better understand and model how architectural and design choices influence the ATM system and its behaviours, and vice versa how the expected ATM overall performances drive the design choices.  The EvoATM project will model a specific part of ATM system combining the agent based paradigms with evolutionary computing.

Centro italiano ricerche aerospaziali (CIRA) (Coordinator)
Aslogic
Centro de Referencia de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación ATM (CRIDA)
ISSNOVA
Projecto, Empreendimentos, Desenvolvimento e Equipamentos Científicos e de Engenharia (Pedece)
Université autonome de Barcelone (UAB)

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

The project aims to make use of technical progress in CCTV cameras, light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology and image processing techniques, and at taking advantage of reduced equipment costs, to provide regional and local airports safe and affordable surface movements surveillance capabilities.

ALTYS Technologies (Coordinator)
Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
Eurocontrol
Graffica

ADAPT -Advanced prediction models for flexible trajectory-based operations

The project proposes strategic models to predict the volume, flexibility and complexity of traffic demand taking into account both individual flights and network infrastructure (i.e. sectors and airports). The aim is to enable early flight information sharing in order to identify potential network bottlenecks and the degree of flexibility of all flights. At the tactical level, the extent to which strategically assessed pre-departure and en-route flight flexibility mitigates actual network congestion, will be evaluated.

Deep Blue
TU Delft
University of Westminster
Università degli Studi di Palermo
Università degli studi di Trieste (Coordinator)

 

GATEMAN -GNSS navigation threats management

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), such as the Galileo constellation, will become the primary means of aircraft navigation in the mid and long term. However, GNSS signals are vulnerable to threats, especially to jamming and spoofing, which may cause the total loss of navigation.  The project will research multiple measures that could be deployed on most aircrafts to manage these threats, either on their own or in a collaborative fashion with other aircraft.

GMV Innovating Solutions (Coordinator)
Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB)
Tampere University of Technology

COTTON - Capacity optimisation in trajectory-based operations

The project aims to maximise the effectiveness of capacity management processes in trajectory-based operations taking full advantage of available trajectory information.
Specifically, the projects explore the integration of demand and capacity and flight centric solutions.

CRIDA (Coordinator)
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)
ENAC
Eurocontrol
TU Delft
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)

 

EMPHASIS -Empowering heterogeneous aviation through cellular signals

The project aims to increase safety, reliability and interoperability of general aviation/rotorcraft (GA/R) operations both with commercial aviation and with emerging drones operations. These aspects are foreseen as critical elements to secure and improve airspace access for GA/R users in future airspace environment and improve operational safety of their operations. 

Airbus
Evektor-Aerotechnik 
Honeywell (Coordinator)
Tampere University of Technology

Domino - Novel tools to evaluate ATM systems coupling under future deployment scenarios

The primary will develop a set of tools, a methodology and a platform to assess the coupling of ATM systems from a flight and a passenger perspective. The platform will allow ATM system designers to gain insight on the impact of applying new mechanisms. It will provide a view of the impact of deploying solutions in different manners, e.g., harmonised vs. local/independent deployment, and information on the criticality of elements in the system and how this might be different for different stakeholders.

Eurocontrol
Innaxis Research Institute
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Università degli studi di Trieste
University of Westminster (Coordinator)