1. Digital NOTAM Towards a concept of operations
xNOTAM Workshop #2
Brussels, November 2007
Item 2
European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation

2. Presentation objectives
Analyse digital NOTAM from an operational point of view
What is a digital NOTAM
Who will produce digital NOTAM
Who will use digital NOTAM

3. Digital NOTAM definition
Current NOTAM
“A notice distributed by means of telecommunication containing information concerning the establishment, condition or change in any aeronautical facility, service, procedure or hazard, the timely knowledge of which is essential to personnel concerned with flight operations.”
Digital NOTAM
aeronautical information update
Event
“A data set made available through digital services containing information concerning the establishment, condition or change in any aeronautical facility, service, procedure or hazard, the timely knowledge of which is essential to systems and automated equipment used by personnel concerned with flight operations.”

4. Digital NOTAM definition
Events
“Permanent” - the effect of which will last until the next permanent change or until the end of the lifetime of the feature
Effective at a time instant
“Temporary” - changes of a limited duration that are considered to be overlaid on the permanent state of the feature
Effective during a time period
“Transient” – a new feature, with a temporary duration (short lifetime)
Aeronautical
Information
Event
Digital
NOTAM

5. Hierarchy of Events
Very helpful for defining application business rules
… and remarkably similar to the NSC concept!
Work in progress, in cooperation with FAA
Identify usual events and provide AIXM encoding guidelines

6. Concept of Operations - goal
Digital NOTAM Concept of Operations
Provide a high-level description (graphical and textual) of the operations to be carried out, simultaneously or in succession, for the origination, encoding and provision to the user of digital NOTAM and of related products and services.
Part of the AIM Concept
Aeronautical
Information
Event
Digital
NOTAM

7. Concept of Operations elements
Beyond AIP and NOTAM:
NOTAM
AIP
for people
for machines
Real time digital aeronautical data

8. Concept of Operations elements
Data centric system
Common workflow for static & dynamic data
AIS products become views/reports on the data
Digital production chain
Enable on-demand production
Gradual world-wide adoption
NOTAM only will continue to be provided from many States for years
as long as necessary for legacy applications
Until the digital NOTAM system reaches equivalent facility of usage
Some current NOTAM strengths
Can be broadcasted worldwide
Real Time broadcasting
Can be read/printed by ops without automated AIS System
Plausibility and Impact analysis covered by ops

9. Concept of Operations elements
Data encoding responsibility transferred to originator
Ensure integrity
Critical new role of the (former) AIS/NOTAM office
Guarantee the quality of the information
Training and support to originator
Encoding of non-common situations will require special skills (deep knowledge of the data model)
“NOTAM Operator” and “static data operator” will become just “data operator”
Transitory role: legacy NOTAM editor
approve output that is automatically generated
touch-up machine generated text to make it more human readable

10. Concept of Operations elements
Solution completeness: create equivalent AIXM-update messages for all currently published NOTAM
However, even in a fully automated system, some information is intended for people -> supported as textual Notes
Database responsibility
capability to validate and question Event notifications received from any organisation, when they do not comply with own quality criteria
Full reliance on HMI
Manual editing of AIXM messages is excluded
Common situations should be fast and simple to encode
Un-common situations should also be supported

11. Concept of Operations elements
NOTAM automatic generation from AIXM changes
Quite obvious for A,B,C,Q fields
D field
AIXM TIMESHEET complex data type – fully structured information
compact and still readable - requires sophisticated algorithms
E field
content may be drafted automatically
“human touch” might be necessary
make it look closer to the natural language

12. Concept of Operations elements
NOTAM automatic generation - advantages
Enforces standard phraseology
D and E field as main beneficiaries
Uniformity in NOTAM content
Prevent excessive use of abbreviations
Guarantee standard use of units of measurement
Encourages small NOTAM with individual scope and purpose
instead of large generic information
improving further filtering
Improved coherence between NOTAM translations
same software component -> similar results

13. Concept of Operations elements
NOTAM validation - currently a major task for
NOTAM data providers
Data Service Providers
Regional databases, such as the EAD
In future, changed objective
Semantic analysis rather than syntactic work
Evaluation of data consistency
Evaluation of impact on operations
Using “semantic rules”
organisation specific
whether received data require manual analysis or not

14. Concept of Operations elements
Generate PIB not from NOTAM, but from Event data
Merge with static data
Merge with other data (MET)

15. Concept of Operations Goal Part of the AIM Concept
Provide a high-level description (graphical and textual) of the operations to be carried out, simultaneously or in succession, for the origination, encoding and provision to the user of digital NOTAM and of related products and services.
Part of the AIM Concept
Benefit from other AIM projects
D-AIM
AIS/MET Data Link
CHAIN
Etc.

16. Digital AIM D-AIM Increment
Data Users
Data Sources
Flight
Briefing
Airports
Data
Outputs
ATSP
CNS
Infra
structure
Pilots
AIP, Amd & Supp
AICs
NOTAM
PIB …
AIS
Organisation
Airspace
Designers
Airlines
ATC
Commercial
Database
Providers
Other
Airspace
User
Digital AIM Services
Others
Other
States

17. Concept of Operations
xNOTAM Project focus -> digital NOTAM origination, encoding and distribution services/interfaces

18. Concept of Operations AI Event Submission and Distribution
Originator
National Reference Database
AIS Product
Editor
Client

19. Concept of operations Data integrator and Service Provider

20. Time for debate