New technologies to boost FAA climate camera system

By Ed Brotak | March 17, 2023

Estimated reading time six minutes, 51 seconds.

New technologies created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies Lincoln Laboratory aims to supply pilots with visibility estimates to boost their understanding of present climate situations at climate camera web-sites.

The Visibility Estimation by way of Image Analytics (VEIA) algorithm utilizes current Federal Aviation Administration climate camera infrastructure to supply the estimates primarily based on an automated comparison of present situations to clear day pictures.

Sponsored by the FAA Workplace of NextGen’s Aviation Climate Division, the VEIA aims to supply pilots with an simple-to-use on the web organizing tool that incorporates true-time visual details to mitigate the effects of climate.

“The show the [FAA’s] climate camera system produced for VEIA tends to make the information really simple to study and interpret,” stated Jenny Colavito, the lead FAA engineer on the project. “The camera pictures are normally displayed, also, so any user can give VEIA information a sanity verify.”

The method has been extensively tested, and the FAA hopes to have it totally operational by the fall of this year.

The regulator initiated its climate camera system in Alaska in 1999. The concept was to set up Television cameras with transmission skills at web-sites in remote places, enabling pilots to see for themselves close to-present climate situations.

Frequently, the location has restricted or non-existent climate details obtainable to pilots, creating preflight “go/no-go” choices specifically tough.

“One of the challenges in point-to-point low altitude operations exactly where you can’t operate more than best of the climate, are climate situations involving the authorized climate sources pilots use for flight organizing choices,” stated Thomas Judge, executive director, LifeFlight of Maine/The LifeFlight Foundation.

This is definitely correct in Alaska, with vast distances to traverse and exactly where smaller sized aircraft are typically the main way of moving people today and supplies.

The FAA’s climate system started with the installation of 3 camera web-sites in Alaska in the very first year. Now, 230 FAA camera web-sites are operated in the state. According to the FAA, the climate camera service resulted in an 85 % reduction in climate-connected accidents and a 69 % reduction in climate-connected flight interruptions involving 2007 and 2014.

The results in Alaska led the FAA to expand the climate camera system to Hawaii. The state’s mountainous terrain, with typically quickly-altering climate situations and restricted climate observations, is routinely traversed by low-flying planes and helicopters. Eleven FAA camera web-sites are presently in operation there.

As the demand for climate cameras grew, but with restricted sources to hand, the FAA turned to third parties for assist. The strategy was for non-federal agencies to fund the camera web-sites, though access to them would be obtainable by way of the federal web-site. State agencies, such as Departments of Transportation, have stepped up, and non-FAA-owned climate cameras web-sites are discovered in Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, and Montana.

The helicopter air ambulance (HAA) sector definitely advantages from climate camera details (if obtainable) from pickup places such as accident web-sites. But it was also noted that such facilities at hospital helipads would also be hugely effective, in particular if climate instrumentation was restricted or missing.

“Increasing the density of the climate grid is important to the security of helicopter air ambulances,” stated Judge. “LifeFlight of Maine’s climate camera project is the subsequent layer of enhancing the density of the climate sources for pilot organizing, with an initial 35 grant-funded climate camera places, of which 20 are presently installed. On a number of occasions, access to the climate cameras has permitted pilots to make a ‘go’ choice to safely attain and transport a important patient.”

Now, the FAA climate camera system owns and maintains the camera systems in Alaska and Hawaii. Its web-site also hosts camera pictures from 280 non-FAA-owned climate cameras web-sites in Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Utah, and across Canada (more than 200 courtesy of NAV Canada).

Each and every climate camera web page commonly provides views in the 4 cardinal directions (north, south, east and west), with the pictures refreshed just about every ten minutes. For reference, a view of the web page on a clear day is shown. A time lapse loop covering the prior six hours might also be incorporated. In addition, the climate camera system web page provides more details important for flight operations, a full list of camera web-sites, and directions and tutorials on how to use the web page.

“I think that the advancement of climate camera technologies, in particular as it applies to the low altitude aviation atmosphere, is capable of bridging a glaring security gap in climate information reporting and climate information evaluation that exists in the low altitude aviation planet of currently,” stated Rex J Alexander, president and executive director of 5-Alpha LLC.

“This is in particular correct for these operations carried out at places exactly where access to classic AWOS and ASOS details, such as heliports, vertiports and emergency accident scenes is non-existent,” he continued. “The implications of bridging this gap will not only be considerable for the classic helicopter industry but will have a important and good influence on the eVTOL, AAM, Drone, and UAS industries of tomorrow.”

The FAA stated it is evaluating installing more climate cameras in Alaska and the Continental US later this year.