NormSTAD Flight Analysis Tool

1. NormSTAD Flight Analysis Tool Figure used with permission from Visualizing Air Traffic Patterns over the Unites States Samet Ayhan Brendan Fruin Fan Yang December 7th, 2012

2. Agenda • Introduction • Data • Demo • Evaluation • Future Work • Conclusion

3. Introduction – What is the problem? • National Airspace System (NAS) • A complex non-deterministic system • Impacted continually by major/minor variables • Weather • Human decisions • Even an insignificant event such as delay in obtaining a wheel chair for a passenger with disability • Accurate delay forecasts are unavailable • Slots for arrival and departure are missed and reassigned • Constantly, decisions are being made to recover the system • Keep it as close to optimal, given its current state • No method available • Quantifying the effects of a decision or • Comparing them to an alternate decision • Wasted fuel, and time resulting in less greener skies, loss of resources

4. Introduction – How does NormSTAD solve? • NormSTAD, a web-based tool • Interactively visualize flight data • Overlay flights with varying time series, • Detect • Outliers / anomalies • Holding, slow-down, and speed-up patterns • Discover • Progress of a flight with respect to others • Ascend and descend patterns • Initiate an effort to further analyze • Rectify the causes • Save money and time • Consume less fuel, have greener skies • Manage air traffic more efficiently • Stands for Normalized Speed, Time, Altitude, and Distance

5. Data – ASDI • Aircraft Situation Display to Industry (ASDI) • Near real-time air traffic data • Provided by the FAA • Position and flight plan • Basic attributes • Latitude, • Longitude, • Altitude, • Airspeed, • Departure/arrival airport, • Flight number • Sampled down (~1/6) for efficiency

6. Demo

7. Evaluation • Niche subject matter (ATM) • Used Expert Reviews and Questionnaire • Three subject matter experts (SME) • One from academia • Two from industry (Retired ATCs) • Provided with walkthrough/tutorial – 20 minutes • Questionnaire with six sections – 20 minutes • 3 specific tasks to complete – 15 minutes

8. Evaluation • Questionnaire with six sections – 20 minutes • Overall reaction System capabilities • Screen Terminology • Learning Open-ended comments

9. Evaluation • Retired AT Controller commented: • “Hmm, this flight has such a fluctuating vertical flight path!” • You should demonstrate this to the FAA. They would benefit from using it!” • Academician commented: • “Very easy to use” • “A novel way of looking at flights” • Changes per improvement suggestion: • Only summary info displayed in Details on Demand table • Revised the terminology • Enabled multi-select in line chart • Added legend to the line chart

10. Future Work • Display all data points • Currently only show sampled data due to implementation constraints • Show airport surface data • We only have en-route data available for NormSTAD, but would like to extend to include airport surface data

11. Conclusion • NormSTAD is a tool that can be used to quickly spot outliers in an easy to use visualization • As seen in demonstration • Outliers or interesting flights can then be further analyzed by other tools • This can result in savings of time and money as a result of an increase in efficiency and fuel consumption is decreased

12. Special Thanks to • Professor Ben Shneiderman • Professor Michael Ball • Subject Matter Experts • Peer Reviewers

13. Discussion Questions?