SESAR-DEMONSTRATORS VC - works

Demonstrators will take place in live operational environments demonstrating services, technologies and standards necessary to deliver the digital European sky. This will help create buy-in from the supervisory authorities, civil and military stakeholders, manufacturers and operational staff, providing tangible evidence of the performance benefits in terms of environment, capacity, safety, security and affordability.

The establishment of a Europe-wide network of large-scale digital sky demonstrators offers a viable means to build confidence and bridge from research, through industrialisation to implementation.

Virtual Centres

The objective of the demonstrations under this topic is to address the issue of the lack of flexibility in sector configuration capabilities at pan-European level clearly highlighted by the airspace architecture study. This lack of flexibility is caused by the close coupling of ATM service provision to ATS systems and operational procedures, preventing air traffic from making use of cross-border service provision and data sharing.

A more flexible use of external data services, taking into account data properties and access rights, would allow the infrastructure to be rationalised, reducing the related costs. This would enable data-sharing, foster more dynamic airspace management and ATS provision, and allow Air Traffic Service Units (ATSUs) to improve capacity in portions of airspace where traffic demand exceeds available capacity. Furthermore, it offers options for the contingency of operations and increased resilience of ATS provision.

• Cost-efficiency. Virtualisation in support of delegation of the provision of ATSs among ATSUs will have an impact on Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) capabilities in terms of resource management at both staffing and facilities level (cost optimisation).
• Capacity/resilience. More manoeuvring margin on resources management by the ANSP will lead to a better use of spare capacity (fewer demand measures required). More dynamic airspace management will contribute to improving capacity while responding with flexibility to airspace users’ flight trajectory needs.
• Environment. The delegation of the provision of ATSs among ATSUs, for both cross-border and non-cross-border cases, will make ATS provision more seamless, as load balancing between ATSUs and avoidance of airspace or ATS provision disruptions will allow Airspace Users (AUs) to fly more efficient trajectories.

The Digital Sky Demonstrators will help to increase buy-in from the ATM community to SESAR Solutions and will provide further evidence to support the business case for them. The Digital Sky Demonstrator instrument will provide a basis for achieving a critical mass of early movers, thus accelerating market uptake, facilitating the industrialisation process for SESAR solutions and promoting their deployment. All stakeholders will have an opportunity to learn and exchange practical expertise related to the introduction of SESAR solutions.

To successfully address the expected outcomes, all or some of the following priorities should be addressed:

• Demonstration of a new Air Traffic Service (ATS) operating model based on the delegation of ATS using virtual centres (VC). The objective is to demonstrate the increased efficiency and resilience of the ATS thanks to better use of resources across ATSU borders; the scope includes the following elements.
  • Delegation of ATS among ATSUs based on traffic/organisation needs (either static on fixed-time transfer schedule (e.g. day/night) or dynamic e.g. when the traffic density is below/above a certain level) or on contingency needs.
  • ATFCM aspects in support of the delegation of ATS, including the interaction with the Network Manager (NM) on dynamic sectorisation and flow allocation. This may include the dynamic delegation of ATS provision for load balancing (ATFCM), cross-border rostering concepts, etc. The delegation of the ATFCM service provision between ATSUs may also be considered.
  • Civil–military aspects of delegation of ATSs (e.g. delegation of ATS provision between civil and military ATSUs). The digitalisation of ATC systems enables virtualisation approaches in which remote operations become an important contributor to resource pooling and rationalisation. Civil–military ATSUs will be able to delegate the airspace to another ATSU as long as there is guarantee of seamless ATS provision in the delegated airspace. Virtual control centres allow for more efficient and flexible use of resources, with civil–military synergies.
  • The Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) receiving the delegation of airspace need to be in possession of the appropriate qualification; the demonstration may include complementary concepts in support of increased flexibility in ATCO validations (e.g. validations for working in a sector restricted to a certain configuration, such as airports/TMAs that are closed at night, sectors combined, etc.), standardisation of procedures and performance support tools to reduce the number of hours required to be current in a sector, so as to make it possible for ATCOS to controlmore sectors, etc. (PJ.16-03, PJ.10-W2-93 and PJ.32-W2-01, AAS TP Milestone 3: virtual centres and dynamic airspace management at large scale).
• Demonstration of new ATS operating model based on the ATM data service providers (ADSPs) concept outlined in the airspace architecture study and later complemented by a European Commission study (European Commission study number MOVE/E3/SER/2018-580/SI2.813340) In the Commission study, ATM data services are defined as services that provideATSUs, airspace users, airports and other operational stakeholders with information on the intended movement of each aircraft, or changes thereto, and with current information on the actual progress of each aircraft, based on operational data received from surveillance services, aeronautical information services, meteorological services, network functions and any other relevant operational data.
  • The scope includes the demonstration of new operating models based on the opportunities opened up by the new service delivery model (e.g. provision of flight data processing and integration services, provision of surveillance data processing and integration services, new services related to ATM data transformation and/or processing dependent on or related to outputs from flight data processing and/or surveillance data processing, services for remote technical monitoring of distributed systems). The development of the technical enablers in support of the new services is also in scope; this includes in particular the ATSEP support tools to support the efficiency of the ATSEP distributed team.
  • The DSD is an opportunity to address the military concerns (e.g. security) on the ADSP concept;
  • The proposed demonstrations must be aligned with the scope of ATM data services in each of the data categories and take into account interfaces with other services or functions and the actors feeding into or consuming the ATM data services, as defined in the European Commission study.
  • These demonstrations should help to overcome the challenges associated with regulatory and certification issues. Close cooperation with European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and/or national regulators is therefore essential to the success of the demonstrations; the demonstrations should aim to achieve the certification of the first ADSP(s) in Europe (PJ.16-03, PJ.10-W2-93 and PJ.32-W2-01, AAS TP Milestone 3: virtual centres and dynamic airspace management at large scale).
• Demonstration of dynamic airspace configurations. This will entail demonstrating in an operational environment the combination of dynamic airspace management and airspace configurations level 0, digital integrated network management and ATC planning (INAP) and dynamic mobile area (DMA) type 1. DMA type 1 is a volume of airspace of specified dimensions described as an integral part of the Mission Trajectory (MT) at flexible geographical locations agreed upon in a CDM process (as part of the mission trajectory negotiation); this solution aims to satisfy military training needs while minimising the impact on civilian traffic. The demonstration’s scope includes the consideration of initial mission trajectory management capability at subregional/local level in the ATM planning phase to support the dynamic configuration of segregated airspace, thus contributing to the efficiency of both civil and military operations. The objective is to demonstrate improvements in the use of airspace capacity for both civil and military AUs, with increased efficiency in airspace management and increased flexibility in civil–military coordination. The scope of the demonstration includes the digital transformational technology impact on collaborative decision making (CDM), mission trajectory management (MTM) and airspace management (ASM) (e.g. ATCO support systems: ATCO screen to show active DMAs in real time and system support for revising trajectories of aircraft that are planned to go into a DMA) (PJ.07-W2-40 and PJ.09-W2-44, AAS TP Milestone 3: virtual centres and dynamic airspace management at large scale).

Activities that can be funded:

Target maturity levels required

The demonstrations under this topic must address a technological readiness level 8 (TRL-8) maturity level (‘actual system completed and mission qualified through test and demonstration in an operational environment’) ) for a number of SESAR solutions delivered at TRL6 level by SESAR 1 and SESAR 2020.. This covers TRL-8 Actual system completed and "mission qualified" through test and demonstration in an operational environment (ground or airborne): end of system development, fully integrated with relevant operational systems (people, processes, hardware and software), most user documentation, training documentation, and maintenance documentation completed. All functionalities are tested in simulated and operational scenarios. Verification, Validation (V&V) and Demonstration completed, regulatory needs and standards are finalised.

Standardisation and regulatory activities

The demonstrators must be closely connected to the standardisation and regulatory activities. Early engagement with the regulator during the demonstration process can significantly de-risk subsequent issues related to regulatory needs, approvals, safety assessments etc. for the SESAR solutions under scope. With this in mind, European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and/or National Supervisory Authority (NSA) involvement through the partners must be envisaged at the level of advising on the suitability of the safety assessments as well as risk and hazard identification and mitigation approaches required for the solution. The potential need for future rulemaking to support the eventual implementation of the solution must be identified along with the development of standardsidentified in the European ATM Standards Coordination Group (EASCG) rolling plan . The work of the project must then be appropriately focused on delivering the material that couldbe required for finalising the regulatory needs and standards.

The following two specific deliverables addressing the regulatory activities and standards will have to be provided by the Digital Sky Demonstrators in order to guarantee the adequate consideration by the projects of the needs to coordinate closely with EASA and EASCG:

• REG: proposed SESAR Acceptable Means of Compliance to EASA to illustrate means to establish compliance with the Basic Regulation and its Implementing Rules;
• STAND: proposed SESAR Input to EASCG standardisation activities.