We evaluate flight data for safety assessments, incident and accident investigation, as well as safety and performance monitoring.
The first step is always data preparation and preprocessing. This entails data fusion from the various surveillance and acquisition systems (either on-board or ground-based) and augmentation with flight plan and weather data. As part of this, data needs to be synchronized in time and space (coordinate conversion & bias elimination). GfL has a strong background in reconstructing series of flight-related events and aircraft motion over time, utilizing on-board flight data, ground-based surveillance data as well as flight simulator data.
Depending on the type of consideration and objectives, we will then define representative performance measures and quantify those using the prepared flight data. Typical considerations are:
- flight operational risk assessment
- collision risk with terrain / obstackles and other traffic
- undershoot, veer-off, overrun (runway safety considerations)
- optimization of flight trajectories
- identification of potential savings (fuel, noise, emissions)
- adaptation of procedures (flight operations, ATC)
- adaptation of infrastructures (ground infrastructure, airspace organization)
- detailed considerations
The performance measures are evaluated using industry-standard statistical methods, and scientific standards (e.g. discussion of measurement errors as well as process uncertainties) will be applied when we draw our conclusion.
