|
| Current
Issue |
|
|
| Interview
|
 |
Keeping
an eye on air safety
Dejan Damjanovic
Project Manager,
GeoEye
|
|
High
resolution satellite imagery
databases of
airports are critical for the
safety of flight operations,
opines Dejan Damjanovic of GeoEye.
He says these databases facilitate
world’s airlines and air
traffic control providers to
move to a fuel-efficient method
of air routes and allow more
aircraft per hour to takeoff
and land at any given airport,
increasing flight volumes at
the already-busy airports worldwide |
|
| |
How
do satellite imagery based airport
mapping databases aid in flight safety
operations? How important is this? |
 |
Airport
mapping databases and terrain databases
are crucial in enhancing flight safety,
both on the ground and in the air.
The growing demand for these products
is an evidence of their importance
and GeoEye recently signed a contract
with the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency (NGA) to build hundreds of
additional airport mapping databases.
We believe that these devices will
be a significant step in preventing
the types of tragedies we’ve
seen in recent years.
The primary challenge for safety of
flight operations is the avoidance
of terrain obstacles that are the
single largest cause of crashes. In
order to collect those features, we
require a stable, accurate 3D image
source. Stereo satellite imagery collected
on the same orbit (known as in-track
stereo) is the ideal source to create
the airport mapping database and terrain
and obstacle features.
|
|
What
is the nature of satellite imagery
(in terms of resolution, monochromatic/multispectral,
2D/3D etc) that best suits flight
safety operations? |
|
The
ideal resolution would be 1-meter
or better, stereo/3D, and natural
colour or false colour for ideal feature
recognition. This would be suitable
for the airport mapping database,
and obstacle databases. For the terrain
database in the larger vicinity of
the airport, panchromatic, stereo/3D
imagery of 2.5-m such as Cartosat-1
would be suitable. |
|
Is
aircraft safety limited to getting
aircraft into and out of airports
safely? Is there anything more to
it? |
|
There
are three primary phases of flight
– taxiing, takeoff and landing,
and en route cruising from departure
to destination city. In taxiing mode,
we use the airport mapping database
to plan the safest routes to and from
the runway so as to avoid collisions
with other taxiing aircraft. The planimetric
details of the runway, taxiways aprons
and parking positions can be used
to compute turning radius of various
aircraft and the shortest taxi routes
from location to location at the airport
(to save fuel). In the takeoff and
landing mode, we use the terrain and
obstacle feature collection to find
the route in and out of the airport
that exposes the aircraft to the least
amount of hazardous terrain or obstacles.
Once the aircraft is at a high altitude
in the cruise mode, we need to be
concerned with possible emergency
landing sites that can be used in
the event of an engine failure or
pressurisation failure. There is a
classic issue in high mountain ranges
like the Himalayas or the Andes –
a loss of pressurisation cannot result
in an emergency descent, as the terrain
is too high. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
© 2004 Geospatial Today, All rights reserved. |
|
