ICNS Task Kick-Off

The Integrated, Communications Navigation and Surveillance (ICNS) task had its official kick-off with the full government team on Tuesday, March 24.  The task was awarded through the NextGen Institute to a team lead by Raytheon Inc.  In addition to Raytheon, the team includes ARINC and Rockwell Collins to cover the avionics perspective, Thales to address global interoperability, and Aviation Management Associates for the development of operational scenarios.

The task was developed in response to feedback from the Navigation Backup study performed last year.  The task investigates the far-term functional, performance, and interoperability requirements for ICNS.  The interaction among the modes is also included.  In phase one of the task, Raytheon will develop operational scenarios to describe how ICNS links to the NextGen concept.  This phase will be completed at the end of April.  Phase two decomposes the scenarios into the requirements and the design trade space.  The trade space is then analyzed.  The results of phase two will be available at the end of September.

We are excited about this task, and we look forward to the results, which will be key in: 1) moving the NextGen concept forward, and 2) adding more detail to the research and policy questions needed to bring the far term into fruition.

Jay Merkle
JPDO Chief Architect

JPDO and NIST Discuss Possible Collaboration

Today, Bob Pearce and I met with Cita M. Furlani, Director of Information Technology Laboratory (ITL), and her staff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Headquarters.  The objective of the meeting was to explore areas of mutual investment and development interests between the JPDO and NIST.  Bob and I covered the JPDO initiative and investment portfolio objectives, and Cita Furlani gave an overview of the NIST organization and ITL objectives. During my talk, I presented eight fundamental areas that the JPDO believes are possible areas of coordination in regards to standards development or technology assessments: 1.  Virtual Towers  2. Trajectory Based Operations  3. Reconfigurable Systems  4. Strategic Real-time Collaborations  5. Integrated Super Dense Operations  6.  Advanced Weather Capabilities  7.  UAS Operations  8. Advanced Safety and Security.

ITL took the action to coordinate a group to visit the JPDO to get an in-depth understanding of the JPDO Enterprise Architecture and to map possible points of coordination and integration.  ITL staff in attendance included: Jim St. Pierre, Deputy Director (ITL); Kamie Robers, Associate Director for Federal & Industrial Relations (ITL); Marty Herman, Chief, Information Access Division (ITL); and Jim Dray, Scientific Advisor to ITL Director.

Yuri Gawdiak
JPDO Director, Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division

Thoughts After Viewing Mitre’s Collaborative Experimentation Environment

I spent a couple of hours yesterday viewing a hurricane disaster response experiment in Mitre’s Collaborative Experimentation Environment.  The experiment was around the coordination of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) operations to support the missions of multiple agencies in response to a hurricane event.  Agencies provided the operational experts that were run through several scenarios with various levels of technology support to evaluate the effectiveness of processes, interactions, and decision-making.

This was a good example of the use of experimentation to support multi-agency operations, and it was also instructive to the need for a backbone of continuous experimentation as a core strategy of achieving NextGen.  The aviation system today and NextGen tomorrow will rely on expert operators interacting with each other, systems, and “systems of systems” to accomplish each organization’s mission.  The policies, procedures, and systems we develop can not be considered independent of the human operator.  The human operator brings skills, norms, decision-making styles, and innovative capacity to the table.  Therefore, achieving a transformation like NextGen means engaging the people that operate the system on a continuous basis to ensure that the total system, including the human, gets the job done.  Experimentation is a great way to ensure that engagement — so experimentation needs to be at the heart of NextGen development.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

JPDO Holds Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO) Conference

The JPDO’s TBO Conference was held yesterday.  The goals of the conference were to:  better align JPDO Working Group activities with ongoing agency and industry TBO efforts; facilitate movement towards a common vision and understanding of TBO for the far term, including concepts and operational benefit; share knowledge of who is working on TBO activities, including program goals, objectives, and timeframe; and, develop an understanding of TBO planned efforts from the participants’ view.  The conference included a very rich set of presentations–which you can access here on the JPDO.gov Web site, under “Meetings and Conferences”–that spanned JPDO, FAA and industry TBO concepts, plans, and actions.

The open discussion in the afternoon indicated that there was reasonably good agreement on the far-term TBO concept, but that vocabulary and definitions needed to be aligned to ensure that there is consistent communication of the concept.  There was also substantial discussion as to the need to establish the major pacing issues and key trade-offs that will drive near-term actions necessary to enable the far-term concept.  Many of those issues were discussed at the conference, but they need to be consolidated and prioritized as one of the next steps.

A set of next steps was discussed in the wrap-up to the conference. Those next steps will be refined and used as input to updating Working Group plans in the TBO priority area.  Look for more information and updates as we move forward.

You can view pictures from the event on the JPDO Facebook Fan Page, which is located here.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

JPDO Participates in 1st Annual FAA International Forum

JPDO is participating in FAA’s International Forum being held this week in Washington. Specifically, we participated in the “Industry / Stakeholders Roundtable” and provided some comments on FAA’s “International Priorities 2010 to 2014″ document. The document is well written and quite detailed with NextGen being integrated into all of the strategic initiative areas. We are also participating in the “NextGen Essentials Panel”, providing multi-agency perspectives on planning and priorities.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

NextGen and Operations Planning “All Hands” Meeting

ATO NextGen and Operations Planning Vice President Vicki Cox, in her remarks at today’s NextGen “All Hands”, said that NextGen is a priority of the Obama Administration.  It is, as the mission statement for this organization says, about “giving the world new ways to fly…”  Today’s All Hands offered NextGen employees the opportunity to hear from each of the FAA NextGen Organization Directors as they explained their role in NextGen.  The objective was to provide an integrated perspective on the diverse range of effort–whether it’s in research, integration, systems development, or testing–that is part of developing this crucial national initiative.

Charles Leader, the Director of the JPDO, explained his organization’s role in terms of its planning efforts and its work in helping to structure the implementation efforts of the other agencies involved in NextGen.  This includes the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, NASA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and most recently, the Director of National Intelligence.  Mr. Leader discussed the online, interagency, relational database, the Joint Planning Environment (JPE), which integrates the NextGen multi-agency Concept of Operations, Enterprise Architecture, and Integrated Work Plan.   He also mentioned the work of the JPDO in developing a national integrated surveillance plan, and in its collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD) in developing net-centric capabilities.

Mike Romanowski, Director of the Integration and Implementation Office, explained his organization in terms of its role in developing enterprise-level planning and implementation.  The goal, and his organization has developed an automated capability to manage this work, is to integrate all of the FAA’s budgeting, research, and implementation work.  He also noted the importance the FAA is placing on industry involvement.  This is a key responsibility of his office.  As Mr. Romanowski noted, industry is naturally concerned about the equipage demands of NextGen and needs to be able to plan their future aircraft upgrades.

Jim Williams, Director of the Systems Engineering and Safety Office, explained that one of the principal accomplishments of his office has been to develop new NextGen roadmaps, and, most significantly, to align these roadmaps with the enterprise architecture.  His office has also supported eight programs through the concept and requirements definition process, and has handled over 500 NAS change proposals.

Aviation Weather, as explained by Office Director Ken Leonard, is the most pervasive and serious concern to the operation of the NAS.  To emphasize this point and to illustrate the importance weather plays in developing NextGen, he noted that 70% of all delays in the NAS are caused by weather.   It has to be a key NextGen concern.  The Aviation Weather office has established a multi-agency NextGen Network Enabled Weather (NNEW – this is a part of the 4-D cube) Program Office.  The goal of this organization, through the application of net-centric capabilities, and advanced system integration, is to leverage the data-gathering capabilities of the thousands of platforms and sensors throughout the NAS.   The result will be a much more robust and reliable aviation weather capability.  This will help controllers and pilots in better managing operation in inclement weather.

The Tech Center, as introduced by Laboratory Director Wilson Felder, is “the nation’s leading laboratory for transportation.”  It’s where systems are tested and evaluated before they are put into actual use.  This includes, as Mr. Felder noted, testing done outside the lab to include the Gulf of Mexico VHF flight test, as well as future NextGen demonstration efforts.

Barry Scott, Director of the NextGen Research and Technology Development Office, discussed his office’s role as leading the FAA’s research and development initiative.  This includes developing the National Aviation Research Plan (NARP), but also includes planning and conducting the high profile NextGen demonstrations.

One of the important parts of the FAA’s work in developing NextGen is the ability to model and simulate the changes NextGen technologies and procedures will have on the NAS.  This includes modeling overall system mobility, NextGen benefits, and future performance characteristics.  Joe Post, the Director of the NextGen System Analysis Office, is developing his organization’s ability to deliver these capabilities and further, to integrate them into the work of each of the other Directorates.

David Kerr
JPDO Director, Partnership Development Division

Achieving an Integrated Surveillance Capability

Integrated surveillance –- the correlation of cooperative and non-cooperative surveillance data to create a user-defined operational picture –- is a fundamental component of NextGen. There is no current institutional governance mechanism for coordinating the policy, requirements, funding, acquisition, operations, or maintenance of the nation’s Aviation Transportation System surveillance assets. To address this situation, the JPDO’s Integrated Surveillance Study Team recommended establishing a formal, institutionalized interagency mechanism for responsibility, management, and ownership of elements of integrated surveillance (including funding). A similar recommendation was made in the recent Air Domain Surveillance and Intelligence Integration Action Item 102 report. This situation has been acknowledged as long ago as the North American Air Surveillance Plan of 2000, and has been revalidated at subsequent Long Range Radar Conferences and Surveillance Summits.

On January 7, recognizing the need and opportunity to address this problem, the JPDO’s Senior Policy Committee accepted the governance role for interagency coordination of aviation surveillance for a period of 18 months, and directed the JPDO interagency staff to coordinate development of an interagency concept of operations and an integrated surveillance enterprise architecture (to include a funding profile). We will also identify existing and potential executive bodies to provide long-term interagency governance of aviation surveillance activities. While these steps are not sufficient by themselves to solve the problem for the long-term, they do set us on a positive path.

Peggy Gervasi
JPDO Director, Strategic Interagency Initiatives Division

JPDO Meets with DOT and OSTP

In the past weeks, several Division Directors and staff in the JPDO have met with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Office Science Technology & Policy (OSTP) to strategize on how to work with the partner agencies to baseline to the NextGen goals, metrics, and targets.

Yuri Gawdiak
JPDO Director, Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division

FY09 Mitre Work Program for the JPDO

Mitre CASSD and JPDO met yesterday to review the Mitre FY09 Work Program in support of JPDO activities.  Mitre has a diverse work plan that supports most of the JPDO’s Divisions and Working Groups.  For example, Mitre has an initiative to expand DoD engagement, and support integration of specific NextGen focus areas between the civil and military sectors.  To support this work, Mitre uses both its CASSD FFRDC and the FFRDC it operates for DoD.  Another major example of Mitre support to the JPDO is in the area of business case analysis, including the development of an integrated financial model.  For those with KSN access, click here for the briefing package.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Meeting

JPDO will be participating in tomorrow’s monthly meeting of the NSCT’s Aeronautics Science and Technology Subcommittee (look here for more information). Ed Waggoner, Director of JPDO’s Interagency Architecture and Engineering Division (IAED) has co-chaired the Subcommittee’s Mobility Coordinating Group from its inception. Other JPDO leaders have also been involved, including FAA’s Lourdes Maurice, co-chair of the Subcommittee’s Energy and Environment Coordinating Group. This participation has ensured that the NSTC’s National Plan for Aeronautics R&D and Related Infrastructure, and the recently released Technical Appendix, fully align with the R&D needs of NextGen.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director