In much the same way crowd-sourcing improved safety and efficiency of surface vehicular travel (www.waze.com), we propose the AirWAZE concept will provide similar benefits for aerospace. As envisioned, AirWAZE is a cloud-based, interactive, icon-driven, web application/display of NAS events, weather constraints, route impacts and operational anomalies where NAS stakeholders – pilots, controllers, dispatchers, safety and security personnel, crowd-share information to observe, create, or react to events occurring in the NAS to improve safety and efficiency and enhance gate-to-gate Trajectory Based Operations (TBO). This innovation provides real-time and near real-time data to all approved, connected stakeholders in a user-friendly, readily consumable format. AirWAZE data will be passively and actively collected, and designed for viewing on most smart phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Most common browser versions will be supported and as the application will be cloud based, there is no need for software downloads.
Our aviation industry has a long and productive track record with tools and concepts of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). AirWAZE moves this process further forward, capitalizing on available technology and with crowd-sourced inputs exponentially broadens common situational awareness for improved CDM results. Through simple inputs and with easily understood icons, the community can rapidly alert to safety events (icing, turbulence, wind shear), and inefficiencies (holding, vectors, departure delays) thereby having useful, actionable information for flight and fleet planning decisions. This concept includes a “NAS Chat” feature to accommodate amplifying event information providing a running record to allow self-briefing at any time for improved situational awareness. In the long-term artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) will help improve predicting and generating alerts on ANSP restrictions and inputs can be autoformatted for rapid NOTAMs.
Our research supports NASA’s focus area for Advanced ATM System Concepts, providing novel and innovative concepts addressing known ATM challenges in efficiency, capacity and throughput. It enables the identification and immediate sharing of NAS constraints to affected stakeholders, improving situational awareness and data-informed decision making. It supports the integration of new operators, vehicles and missions including UAS/UAM, Commercial Space Transportation, Super and Hypersonic flight very high-altitude Balloon and Military operations.
This concept has direct application to non-NASA Agencies including Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security and others having an aviation/aviation security presence. This interactive platform has great benefit to the VFR community, particularly the State of Alaska. We see broad application for efficiency and safety in air traffic operations internationally.