New technology has ensured a new era in airport safety. Human error, bad weather and ineffective ground radar can all have serious consequences on airport safety, increasing the risk of an accident. New complementary airport safety systems currently under development promise to avoid such incidents in the future.

'Though technology has come a long way in recent years toward improving airport safety, it is evident that current systems using ground radar or cameras to detect aircraft and other vehicles suffer from deficiencies', says Haibin Gao, a researcher at Saarland University.

New, more efficient and more accurate systems are therefore needed to prevent accidents, especially as the world's skies and airports buzz with an ever-increasing number of commercial and private aircraft. Saving lives is obviously the central goal of any such safety improvement. But they can also provide significant economic benefits. Reducing the number of near misses between planes, and between planes and ground vehicles - thousands of which occur worldwide each year, primarily as a result of runway incursions - would save airlines and airport operators billions of Euros in lost time and efficiency. By being able to pinpoint the exact location and course of an aircraft or vehicle, airports would be able to maintain current capacity even during periods of bad visibility.