Estimated stand-off distance between ADS-B equipped aircraft and obstacles

Summary:

Estimated stand-off distance between ADS-B equipped aircraft and obstacles. Obstacle information was sourced from the FAA Digital Obstacle File and the FHWA National Bridge Inventory. Aircraft tracks were sourced from processed data curated from the OpenSky Network. Results are presented as histograms organized by aircraft type and distance away from runways.

Description:

For many aviation safety studies, aircraft behavior is represented using encounter models, which are statistical models of how aircraft behave during close encounters. They are used to provide a realistic representation of the range of encounter flight dynamics where an aircraft collision avoidance system would be likely to alert. These models currently and have historically have been limited to interactions between aircraft; they have not represented the specific interactions between obstacles and aircraft equipped transponders. In response, we calculated the standoff distance between obstacles and ADS-B equipped manned aircraft.

For robustness, this assessment considered two different datasets of manned aircraft tracks and two datasets of obstacles. For robustness, MIT LL calculated the standoff distance using two different datasets of aircraft tracks and two datasets of obstacles. This approach aligned with the foundational research used to support the ASTM F3442/F3442M-20 well clear criteria of 2000 feet laterally and 250 feet AGL vertically.

The two datasets of processed tracks of ADS-B equipped aircraft curated from the OpenSky Network. It is likely that rotorcraft were underrepresented in these datasets. There were also no considerations for aircraft equipped only with Mode C or not equipped with any transponders. The first dataset was used to train the v1.3 uncorrelated encounter models and referred to as the “Monday” dataset. The second dataset is referred to as the “aerodrome” dataset and was used to train the v2.0 and v3.x terminal encounter model. The Monday dataset consisted of 104 Mondays across North America. The other dataset was based on observations at least 8 nautical miles within Class B, C, D aerodromes in the United States for the first 14 days of each month from January 2019 through February 2020. Prior to any processing, the datasets required 714 and 847 Gigabytes of storage. For more details on these datasets, please refer to "Correlated Bayesian Model of Aircraft Encounters in the Terminal Area Given a Straight Takeoff or Landing" and “Benchmarking the Processing of Aircraft Tracks with Triples Mode and Self-Scheduling.”

Two different datasets of obstacles were also considered. First was point obstacles defined by the FAA digital obstacle file (DOF) and consisted of point obstacle structures of antenna, lighthouse, meteorological tower (met), monument, sign, silo, spire (steeple), stack (chimney; industrial smokestack), transmission line tower (t-l tower), tank (water; fuel), tramway, utility pole (telephone pole, or pole of similar height, supporting wires), windmill (wind turbine), and windsock. Each obstacle was represented by a cylinder with the height reported by the DOF and a radius based on the report horizontal accuracy. We did not consider the actual width and height of the structure itself. Additionally, we only considered obstacles at least 50 feet tall and marked as verified in the DOF.

The other obstacle dataset, termed as “bridges,” was based on the identified bridges in the FAA DOF and additional information provided by the National Bridge Inventory. Due to the potential size and extent of bridges, it would not be appropriate to model them as point obstacles; however, the FAA DOF only provides a point location and no information about the size of the bridge. In response, we correlated the FAA DOF with the National Bridge Inventory, which provides information about the length of many bridges. Instead of sizing the simulated bridge based on horizontal accuracy, like with the point obstacles, the bridges were represented as circles with a radius of the longest, nearest bridge from the NBI. A circle representation was required because neither the FAA DOF or NBI provided sufficient information about orientation to represent bridges as rectangular cuboid. Similar to the point obstacles, the height of the obstacle was based on the height reported by the FAA DOF. Accordingly, the analysis using the bridge dataset should be viewed as risk averse and conservative. It is possible that a manned aircraft was hundreds of feet away from an obstacle in actuality but the estimated standoff distance could be significantly less. Additionally, all obstacles are represented with a fixed height, the potentially flat and low level entrances of the bridge are assumed to have the same height as the tall bridge towers. The attached figure illustrates an example simulated bridge.

It would had been extremely computational inefficient to calculate the standoff distance for all possible track points. Instead, we define an encounter between an aircraft and obstacle as when an aircraft flying 3069 feet AGL or less comes within 3000 feet laterally of any obstacle in a 60 second time interval. If the criteria were satisfied, then for that 60 second track segment we calculate the standoff distance to all nearby obstacles. Vertical separation was based on the MSL altitude of the track and the maximum MSL height of an obstacle.

For each combination of aircraft track and obstacle datasets, the results were organized seven different ways. Filtering criteria were based on aircraft type and distance away from runways. Runway data was sourced from the FAA runways of the United States, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands open dataset. Aircraft type was identified as part of the em-processing-opensky workflow.

All: No filter, all observations that satisfied encounter conditions

nearRunway: Aircraft within or at 2 nautical miles of a runway

awayRunway: Observations more than 2 nautical miles from a runway

glider: Observations when aircraft type is a glider

fwme: Observations when aircraft type is a fixed-wing multi-engine

fwse: Observations when aircraft type is a fixed-wing single engine

rotorcraft: Observations when aircraft type is a rotorcraft

License

This dataset is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form and for noncommercial purposes only. Only noncommercial use of your work is permitted. Noncommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation. Exceptions are given for the not for profit standards organizations of ASTM International and RTCA.

MIT is releasing this dataset in good faith to promote open and transparent research of the low altitude airspace. Given the limitations of the dataset and a need for more research, a more restrictive license was warranted. Namely it is based only on only observations of ADS-B equipped aircraft, which not all aircraft in the airspace are required to employ; and observations were source from a crowdsourced network whose surveillance coverage has not been robustly characterized.

As more research is conducted and the low altitude airspace is further characterized or regulated, it is expected that a future version of this dataset may have a more permissive license.

Distribution Statement

DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A. Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.

© 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Delivered to the U.S. Government with Unlimited Rights, as defined in DFARS Part 252.227-7013 or 7014 (Feb 2014). Notwithstanding any copyright notice, U.S. Government rights in this work are defined by DFARS 252.227-7013 or DFARS 252.227-7014 as detailed above. Use of this work other than as specifically authorized by the U.S. Government may violate any copyrights that exist in this work.

This material is based upon work supported by the Federal Aviation Administration under Air Force Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0001.  Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Aviation Administration.

This document is derived from work done for the FAA (and possibly others); it is not the direct product of work done for the FAA. The information provided herein may include content supplied by third parties.  Although the data and information contained herein has been produced or processed from sources believed to be reliable, the Federal Aviation Administration makes no warranty, expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, completeness, legality, reliability or usefulness of any information, conclusions or recommendations provided herein.  Distribution of the information contained herein does not constitute an endorsement or warranty of the data or information provided herein by the Federal Aviation Administration or the U.S. Department of Transportation.  Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor the U.S. Department of Transportation shall be held liable for any improper or incorrect use of the information contained herein and assumes no responsibility for anyone’s use of the information.  The Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation shall not be liable for any claim for any loss, harm, or other damages arising from access to or use of data or information, including without limitation any direct, indirect, incidental, exemplary, special or consequential damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.  The Federal Aviation Administration shall not be liable to anyone for any decision made or action taken, or not taken, in reliance on the information contained herein.

Download and Format:

The dataset is provided as a single .zip archive with multiple directories. The directories indicate the aircraft track dataset and types of obstacles. Within each directory are csv files corresponding to different the filtering criteria. These files are the total counts of observations (histogram) where columns corresponding to lateral (range) distance between the simulated obstacle and aircraft and rows correspond to the relative vertical separation. The files centers_x_ft.csv and centers_y_ft.csv are the center of each bin.

Simply download the .zip file and extract. The MD5 checksum of the .zip file prior to uploading to Zenodo was 03e5aed725a4cf393683730e05521ba5.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory LL Group and Division this dataset is associated with:

Group 42 / Division 4

Topic: collision avoidance

R&D Area: Air Traffic Control

R&D Group: Surveillance Systems