JPDO Board Meeting Held on Tuesday

The JPDO Board (to see who is on the Board, go here) met on Tuesday this week.  Meeting topics included an overview of interagency initiative “stoplight charts” that status progress, as well as more in-depth discussions on specific initiatives, including National Aviation Safety Management, Integrated Surveillance, and Net-Centric Operations.  An overview of the Joint Planning Environment (JPE) and a status of JPDO Working Group planning was provided, too. The potential impacts of Space Weather (solar activity) on the NextGen system was highlighted and led to further action to understand the potential magnitude of this problem.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

Net-Centric Operations Debuts ‘09 Products

For those of us on JPDO’s NextGen Net-Centric Operations (NCO) team, March ’09 will definitely come in like a lion. In early February, we introduced the NCO Weather Community of Interest (COI) Engagement Plan, and then almost immediately commenced an ambitious needs-analysis drive with our partners on JPDO’s inter-agency Weather Working Group. Weather COI plans an aggressive 2012 roll-out schedule of NextGen services.

In NCO, we enjoy working at the heart of NextGen to help make it a reality. Net-Centric’s enterprise information systems — riding a secure, reliable, and scalable communication network — will provide NextGen’s airborne, mobile ground-based, and fixed ground-based users with the adaptive and dynamically interactive environment necessary for the integration of Safety, Surveillance, Positioning, Navigation, Timing and Weather reports. Net-Centric services will also provide common, consolidated, and integrated information to support improved environmental protection and monitoring.

Much of the considerable expertise required by our NCO team is provided by the U.S. Air Force (USAF), which has long since recognized the importance of net-centric operations to the future of its mission, and for years has been a leader in its development. USAF acts in concert with JPDO, Department of Defense, and Aerospace Industry partners to foster inter-agency, as well as public/private sector, cooperation and collaboration necessary to develop advanced net-centric operations that will transform information exchange in the national airspace system.

In March, we’ll deliver an inaugural Net-Centric Operations Roll-Out Plan.  The Plan describes a pragmatic, phased “spiral” approach to NCO development and implementation, as well as Governance and oversight responsibilities. NCO members are also major players in helping to develop JPDO’s NextGen Integrated Surveillance ConOps, which envisions a greatly enhanced surveillance capability for the National Air System (NAS), enhancing safety and security while accommodating increased demand.

In June, we’ll “roll out” our own NCO ConOps. This document provides a foundation for developing interagency and agency-specific policies, processes, procedures, and organizational relationships to align activities that contribute to achieving efficient and effective information sharing among all NextGen partners.

Stephen Irmo
Net-Centric Operations Division
Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO)

NextGen Interagency Budget Request

The Interagency Portfolio & Systems Analysis division is working a request by the Office of Management and Budget for the development of an FY 2010 interagency budget submission for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The requested FY10 budget data, which is pre-decisional, will be used internally by the Office of Management and Budget in order to highlight NextGen interagency components and to identify the Federal contribution to NextGen. The Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) will compile the data and will provide this data to the Department of Transportation for transmittal to the Office of Management and Budget no later than February 19, 2009.
–
Yuri Gawdiak
Director, Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division
Joint Planning & Development Office (JPDO)

Airport Working Group Workshop Underway

I just got back from the NextGen Airport Capacity Workshop hosted by the Airport Working Group.  Adequate airport capacity, both airside and landside, are critical to NextGen, and yet to date, have not received as much attention as other NextGen domains (such as aircraft or CNS/ATM).  This workshop is shining some important light on the role that airports play and some of the key improvements that have been identified through the FAA’s FACT analyses and JPDO’s high density analysis.  The workshop is also highlighting current ongoing planning and programs that will have large impacts on airport capacity and performance, like ADS-B and Closely Spaced Parallel Runway Operations.  The workshop will go through tomorrow and and should result in a refined Airports Working Group work plan for this year.  For those with KSN access, briefings are available here, under the category: Airports Capacity Workshop.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

Thoughts on the Feb 5 All Hands Meeting

The “All Hands” held by the JPDO on February 5th was one of our most successful if measured in attendance.  There were around 200 people in attendance (either physically in the room or hooked in by telecon).  It was also very successful if measured by content.  We had information being shared by a key stakeholder (Mr. James E. Bennett, CEO and President of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority), a key partner (Dr. Ajay Misra, Program Director of NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program), and one of our very own Working Groups (Mr. Steve VanTrees of the JPDO Aircraft Working Group).  I think we can say that the All Hands is filling its intended mission – which is to provide important and timely information on NextGen to the broad JPDO network.  The JPDO is not a traditional organization – it depends on the large network of individuals that participate on JPDO working groups or with JPDO divisions that reach back into many government and private sector organizations.  There is no practical way to get all of those hands on deck.  But the JPDO’s All Hands meeting is one mechanism for reaching out and having a dialogue.  Please respond to this post if you have requests for specific topics or ideas for further improving communications.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

Working Groups Co-Chairs Meeting

We held a meeting of the Working Groups Co-Chairs last Wednesday (Feb 11).  Yuri Gawdiak (JPDO Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Director) provided an indepth briefing on the approach to multi-agency business case analysis (for those with KSN access, the briefing can be downloaded here).  We also did a debrief of the NextGen Summit held by FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) on February 9th and 10th.  One of the highlights from the Summit was the NAS Architecture briefing by Jess Wijntjes (FAA’s NAS Chief Architect).  But there were questions as to how the FAA’s architecture and the NextGen Architecture developed by the JPDO are related.  Therefore, we are going to schedule a follow up session with Jay Merkle (JPDO’s Chief Architect) and Jesse Wijntjes to discuss how the multi-agency NextGen Architecture that JPDO has developed and the FAA’s NAS Architecture are linked (or federated).  Another concern was the need to get more detail as well as information on multi-agency contributions to key NextGen capabilities.  Therefore, we also plan to hold follow-up “deep dive” multi-agency meetings in these key capabilities.  For example, better definition of Trajectory Based Operations is a high priority and there is a lot of direct activity in this topic area within both FAA and NASA as well as related activities at DoD.  Therefore, this is the first “deep dive” that will be scheduled.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

Joint Planning Environment Now Available

As part of its mission to shape the air transportation system of the future, the JPDO launched version 2.0 of the Joint Planning Environment (JPE) in 2008.

The JPE is a Web-accessible application that serves as a foundation for product and program management, development, and integration. This application allows the JPDO to communicate NextGen planning information in a clear and concise way to partner agencies and stakeholders, with additional features not possible via paper-based publications.

Using the JPE, NextGen partner agencies and stakeholders may search across NextGen work products, view data by agency, data element type, or agency specific framework. Users also have the ability to view detailed reports, charts, and graphs.

The JPE is available on: http://jpe.jpdo.gov/ee. Access the site as a “Guest Browser,” and download a Quick Start Guide, which offers tips on how to effectively navigate the JPE.

NextGen Summit

On Monday, February 9 and Tuesday, February 10, 2009, the Federal Aviation Administration Air Traffic Organization (FAA/ATO) hosted the “NextGen Summit” at The MITRE Corporation in McLean, Virginia. Approximately 140 members of The Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) Working Groups attended the two-day event.

Vicki Cox, Senior VP of FAA/ATO NextGen and Operations Planning, and Mike Romanowski, Director of FAA/ATO NextGen Integration and Implementation, welcomed the attendees and briefed them on the summit’s primary goals, which were to: (1) provide valuable information regarding the FAA’s work toward achieving NextGen and (2) demonstrate how the JPDO Working Groups efforts could assist in this process.

 Jesse Wijntjes, FAA/ATO Chief Architect, NAS EA, and Pam Whitley, FAA/ATO NextGen Integration Manager, along with several Solution Set Coordinators, presented to the audience on the following topics:

• NAS Enterprise Architecture
• NextGen Portfolio Management
• Improve Flexibility in the Terminal Environment
• Improve Arrivals/Departures in High-Density Airports
• Initiate Trajectory-Based Operations
• Improve Collaborative Air Traffic Management
• Reduce Weather Impact
• Improve Safety, Security and Environmental Performance
• Transform Facilities

The presentations are available here on the JPDO KSN for those with access, under NextGen Summit at MITRE or available upon request at 9-AWA-ATO-JPDO-Partnership@faa.gov .

Briefing to the NASA Advisory Council

I was at Kennedy Space Center on February 4th to brief the Aeronautics Committee of the NASA Advisory Council on NASA’s contribution to NextGen.  I discussed how NASA is represented in the NextGen plan, including a discussion of the Joint Planning Framework.  I also discussed our last gap analysis and the conclusion that overall alignment and contribution was very good, but we were looking for a few additional significant contributions, including more work to sort out functional allocations between controllers, pilot and automation, and research into validation and verification methodologies for complex systems.  Finally, I discussed the progress of the NASA – FAA – JPDO Research Transition Teams.

The briefing went about an hour and a half and the Committee was very engaged.  One of the major areas of discussion was around the use of modeling and simulation and whether NASA should do more to model NextGen at a more detailed technical level to support technology level trade-offs and decision-making.  The Aeronautics Committee is chaired by Gen Lester Lyles (unfortunately he was not in attendance for the meeting), and its members are Dr. Eugene Covert, Dr. John Sullivan, Dr. Ilan Kroo, and Dr. Raymond Colladay.  Mr. Alan Ladwig, Special Assistant to the NASA Administrator was also present for the briefing and discussion.

Of interest is that Dr. John Cavolowsky, the Acting Director of the NASA Airspace Systems Program briefed the Committee immediately following me and, without any prior coordination, had almost the same outline, many of the same charts and all of the same messages.  This really helped demonstrate how collaborative and productive the relationship is between NASA and the JPDO.

More information on the NASA Advisory Council can be found here.

You can view my presentation here.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

NASA NRA Scenario Walk-Throughs

Through a NASA Research Announcement (NRA), the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate is sponsoring research efforts to help understand the issues associated with integration of advanced concepts and vehicles into NextGen.  The goal of these efforts is to help inform future research related to NextGen by NASA and the broad aeronautics community.  However, specific research objectives address issues that are applicable to the JPDO mission.  These include understanding how advanced vehicles will operate within NextGen and the tradeoffs involved for both vehicles and the ATM system.  Two efforts were funded under the NRA; one effort led by Raytheon and the other effort led by Sensis Corporation. 

The Raytheon team is taking an approach that relies heavily on the JPDO developed NextGen Enterprise Architecture (EA).  Part of the approach that each team is addressing includes developing procedures describing the operation of these vehicles within the NextGen ConOps. The Raytheon led team has developed various “use case” scenarios for the vehicles they are addressing 4 vehicle types:

•  Super Heavy Commercial Transport
• Supersonic Business Jet
• Very Light Jet (owner/operator and commercially operated)
• Lightweight, Un-crewed Aircraft System

Each scenario was set in the NextGen future environment and included a description of the specific mission, an identification of nodes (actors in the system) and associated roles, a set of preconditions and underlying assumptions, and a detailed description of the flow of activities and communications that will occur to meet the mission.

The Raytheon team and subject matter experts from the JPDO met on February 10 at the JPDO to walk through the use-case scenarios.  This involved stepping through the various missions, activity-by-activity, and performing analyses of completeness, feasibility and compatibility with the NextGen concept and architecture.

Over 25 participants were involved and the output from the walk-throughs will provide valuable information to update the use-case scenarios and ultimately to map to the NextGen architecture initially as OV-6s (an EA artifact).  Next steps include analysis of the Enablers and OI’s from the IWP to provide a detailed assessment of the impact of these advanced vehicles on NextGen.