Areas of Emphasis

ERAU and its consortium partners test, model, and employ Next Generation aviation technologies. The NextGen Test Bed includes a focus on the following areas of emphasis.

Surface Management. This system is an enhanced decision support tool that will help controllers and airlines manage aircraft and vehicle surface traffic at busy airports, enable dynamic runway load balancing, efficient no-queuing taxiing and result in significant savings through reduced fuel burn, emissions, and noise.

Surface Surveillance. This is a radar-based system that displays the location of aircraft on or near the runway and ground vehicles that could pose a hazard to aircraft. Provides alerts to controllers pilots and drivers to prevent a runway or taxiway accident.

Runway Incursion Reduction Program. This program investigates technologies that can help prevent runway incursions. These can vary from simple runway status lights giving pilots signals similar to a traffic light to conformance monitoring software that alerts whenever an aircraft or vehicle leaves its cleared path on the airport surface.

Advanced Weather Forecasting. Weather forecasting can be made far more accurate with meso-scale modeling of the weather out to 4 hours with accuracy better than 1 kilometer. Aircraft can be routed around weather hazards before they form.

Trajectory Based Control. This is controlling aircraft by modifying their trajectories with constraints so that they avoid other aircraft and weather hazards and to ensure an on-time touchdown.