Overview
European air transport demand has experienced a sustained period of high growth in recent years and is expected to continue growing. This situation has led to increased congestion, inefficiency, safety concerns and increased costs for Air Traffic Management (ATM) system users and providers. In an attempt to solve these problems, several national and international initiatives have been launched in recent years. The stage reached by these studies now requires serious consideration to be given to the validation process for the overall enhanced ATM system being designed to cope with the increased air traffic demand predicted for the 21st century.
The objectives of the CAVA project were:
- to merge, consolidate and synthesise all of the work done to date in the field of ATM validation, particularly under the EC 4th Framework Programme and related initiatives,
- to organise a series of technical workshops on validation so as to receive feedback from European experts in ATM and validation in close co-ordination with the AVENUE project,
- to consolidate the feedback received at these meetings as informal input to AVENUE and the 5th Framework Programme.
Funding
Results
The main CAVA result is a methodological structure termed the Validation Framework (VF). The VF identifies and illustrates the scope of topics that must be addressed in order to provide a comprehensive, coherent and manageable environment in which the complex and long-term EATMS (European ATM System) validation process can be devised, and be allowed to evolve in a controlled manner. A large number of high-level requirements related to each part of the VF have been identified, catalogued and assigned a level of importance and urgency. They ensure that the diverse components of the validation activity can operate in mutual harmony, and in accordance with external influences and requirements.
The CAVA validation framework and associated requirements have been used to identify gaps and duplications in current and planned activities related to the VF. Several projects, sponsored by either the European Commission or Eurocontrol, and dealing with issues related to the VF, have been selected to analyse what requirements they are fulfilling or are planned to fulfil, and what should be done to fill the gaps.
CAVA has also produced an Action Plan aimed at limiting duplications and filling gaps in the field of the VF. Interdependencies between actions have been identified in order to sequence and schedule them.
Policy implications
CAVA has analysed past, current and planned research in the area of ATM validation, identifying gaps and duplications. Beyond CAVA, these identified gaps and duplications can be used to refine the objectives of planned and future projects, thus improving their outcome. The list of gaps and duplications can be updated and then used again as the related projects progress or new projects are launched.
Through such actions as broad consultation of organisations involved in ATM validation, setting up of a European management authority or development of standard indicators and metrics, the CAVA Action Plan highlights the big long-term challenge to be achieved by the European ATM Community, i.e. the co-operation among European ATM organisations. In case of lack of co-ordination, the risk is that redundant, incompatible or useless validation work is performed, either because potential users are not aware of the work at all or because it does not correspond to their needs. The actions presented in the CAVA Action Plan can mitigate these risks.