<title>The European research project ISAWARE II: a more intuitive flight deck for future airliners</title>

Abstract

Continuously growing worldwide air traffic poses an immense challenge to civil aviation. While the number of flight operations is increasing, the overall number of accidents has to be reduced. In order to reach this ambitious goal, both avionics and the human machine interface (HMI) of the cockpit have to be improved in the onboard domain. An international consortium led by Thales Avionics, one of Europe's leading avionics manufacturers, is therefore -as part of the EC project ISAWARE II of the 5th Framework Program -developing integrated surveillance systems and cockpit displays which intuitively provide pilots with an optimum situational awareness during all flight phases. The project already uses parts of the interactive Cockpit Display System (CDS) developed for the Airbus A380 as a basis. Primary Flight Display (PFD) and Navigation Display (ND), the two central cockpit displays, are additionally equipped with a so-called "Synthetic Vision System" (SVS), a database-driven representation of terrain and airport features resembling the real outside world.

Considerations on symbology, data requirements, and operational concept for integral NOTAM visualization on airport moving map displays

“…Consequently, these ICAO and FAA regulations also serve as a guideline for visualizing closed runways and taxiways on an airport moving map, and therefore, the corresponding symbology should similar to the ICAO markings, but it is neither required nor intended to mimic these exactly. Due to the slightly different color concepts and marking philosophies employed, the solution for presenting closed runway on the airport moving map requires some abstraction, and after all, the concept behind Synthetic Vision is to achieve sufficient resemblance for an intuitive perception of information, not to create an identical copy of reality on the display (Vernaleken et al, 2005). Furthermore, due to operational constraints, the application of real markings is deliberately kept minimalist and even facultative for temporary runway closures.…”

“…13 In cases where the mere presentation of this closure information is not sufficient to prevent a hazardous situation, a tailored alerting concept consisting of both visual and aural alerts consistent with existing warning systems can be used to alert the flight crew in case they attempt to take off from a closed or otherwise unsuitable runway (Vernaleken et al, 2007a). 14 With a similar rationale, closed taxiways are marked with amber crosses as shown in Figure 4. Closed runways or parts thereof that may still be use for taxiing are indicated by white crosses, see Figure 3.…”

“…Consequently, a partially redundant coding is required, with the essential information that a runway, taxiway or corresponding segment is closed coded by the cross symbol, and the precise nature and criticality of the closure represented by the color of the symbol 14 . The number of distinct closure categories is sufficiently small for color coding to be applicable, cf.…”