Laser-Scan extends award-winning system for RAF

11 September 2006, 12:06pm

Laser-Scan has successfully completed an extension to the award-winning Aeronautical Production System (APS), providing further quality benefits and efficiencies for No. 1 Aeronautical Information Documents Unit (AIDU), Royal Air Force.

The primary objective of the Vertical Obstruction (VO) project was to extend the APS to provide an automated capability for determining incremental VO changes to a variety of product ranges: Low Flying Charts, Chart Amendments to Low Flyers and Military AIP. These products cover a variety of scales, with the raw VO data generalised and then appropriately displayed both graphically and as text.

The process by which this was previously undertaken at AIDU was labour-intensive and potentially error-prone, with unsuitable traceability from end product back to source data. This was seen as unsatisfactory with respect to the unit's data quality standards and the inefficiencies of the process were a contributing hurdle to other business objectives.

The solution provides AIDU with the capability to import the updated raw VO data each month and have it automatically validated to verify it fit-for-purpose. Held within a spatio-temporal data model, VO additions, modifications and deletions are quickly asserted and propagated through an automated generalisation sequence, assessing the change impact for each of the products. Incremental change reports are produced for each product and presented in a form that drives automated and semi-automated product update processes.

The project succeeded in delivering the benefits predicted at the outset, and more:

* Improved analysis time - down from 2-3 person weeks per month, to just a few minutes. This is the process of evaluating what obstructions have changed to discover which products they impact and how they are affected.

* Improved editing time - down from 2-3 person weeks to just a few hours. This is the process of making the identified changes to the affected products.

* An annual saving of 1.5 man-years, all from a 100-man day project investment.

* Reduced analyst training costs and greater workforce flexibility in regard to who can now perform the analysis/editing.

* Improved product quality (and thus greater flight safety) - correct and consistent portrayal of obstruction information on the flight information product sets.

* Increased availability of airspace - 30% fewer multi-obstructions now appear on products safely within the time constraints. Previously there was limited ability to remove obstructions.

* Full traceability of generalised information back to originating source data, providing better quality assurance and the capability to receive and act upon customer feedback.

* Improved source data - validation errors of imported source data are fed back to the originating authority, thereby improving the quality of the data going into this process and benefiting other agencies also using this data.

Wing Commander Phil Speedy, Officer Commanding No. 1 AIDU commented, "No 1 AIDU is delighted with the solution offered by Laser-Scan. The VO project is an exciting and invaluable addition to the Gothic APS, and makes a significant improvement to efficiency, data quality, and ultimately flight safety."

Duncan Guthrie, Managing Director of Laser-Scan, added, "We are delighted in the outstanding success of this project. At a time when air safety is such a high profile issue, this project takes the APS to a new level. For us at Laser-Scan it epitomizes our focus on spatial data quality, on certifying data as fit for purpose, and delivering superior return on investment through automated re-use."

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