Update from JPDO’s IPSA Divsion

As of Oct. 2, 2009, the JPDO’s Interagency Portfolio and System Analysis (IPSA) Division has completed the vetting and review process of its Portfolio Analysis Report, including briefings to partner agencies (FAA, NASA, the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense,  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy).  The feedback and comments received from the Federal partner agencies, through the medium of the Joint Planning Environment (JPE), have been addressed and incorporated into the report.  As the next step, the JPDO will be presenting the report to the Senior Staff Advisor for NextGen coordination at the Department of Transportation (DOT), who will review the report and its results along with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer at DOT.  After this review, the report will be submitted in its final form to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), coinciding with OMB’s independent review of agency budgets and passback.

IPSA has also been involved in the FY11 NextGen Interagency Budget Process.  On Sept. 23, 2009, the Senior Staff Advisor for NextGen coordination at DOT sent a memorandum to the Senior Policy Committee and JPDO Board Members requesting an FY11, NextGen cross-cut budget submission from partner agencies.  Agencies were required to submit their budget data to the JPDO by Sept. 28. The JPDO compiled all of the responses in a consolidated NextGen budget table and supporting forms,  and transmitted that information to DOT. Next, DOT will submit this information to OMB.

Completion of Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance (ICNS) Phase 2

On September 16, 2009, the Raytheon team and the government team held the final review of the ICNS study.  Phase 2 of the ICNS study focused on the analysis of the  four operational scenarios and use cases developed in Phase 1 of the study.  Analyses included:  the development of critical functional, performance and interoperability requirements and enablers; an assessment of the extent of change for ICNS operational improvements and enablers; the development of alternative ICNS architectures; and an analysis of the alternatives.  The analyses clearly identified the strong dependencies between the C, N, and S functionality and the NextGen operational capabilities.

The study showed that implementing NextGen capabilities, such as Trajectory Based Operations, Self Separation, Super Density Terminal Operations, depends on a highly reliable application of CNS resources. The current ICNS architecture provides single thread implementation of crucial information flows, and failure of any single element can have wide ranging impacts on the far-term NextGen system implementation.The analyses yielded a tremendous amount of useful information the JPDO can utilize to improve the Joint Planning Environment (JPE), and to work with stakeholder communities on specific topics of interest.

The all-day Phase 2 review was well attended by government team members as well as by representatives from the JPDO Working Groups.  The large group had a very lively and productive discussion of the analyses that were performed and certainly provided grist for the mill for additional study.  And beyond the specific results of the study, the Raytheon team also concluded:  “The Raytheon’s team’s success demonstrates the value of the JPDO’s Enterprise Architecture, Integrated Work Plan and the Joint Planning Environment”.

The ICNS study is available here.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

JPDO Papers from the AIAA ATIO Meeting Posted

The AIAA’s Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference was held from September 21 – 23, 2009 in Hilton Head, NC.  This conference provides a preeminent venue for NextGen focused R&D with hundreds of papers spanning the scope of NextGen, providing an in-depth picture of the evolving state-of-the-art.

JPDO had two sessions at the conference with eight presentations and five papers.  The papers are posted to the JPDO’s Web site and can be downloaded from the Library, under the “Articles and Publications” heading and “2009″ sub-heading.  JPDO’s papers included a discussion of the JPDO model for interagency planning; an in-depth presentation of the Joint Planning Environment; the results of the analysis of high density airport operations; the framework, tools, and process for the latest JPDO Portfolio Analysis; and a look at the challenges posed by long-term strategic national initiatives.  The presentations (without papers) provided overviews of some of the latest efforts by the JPDO Working Groups–specifically NextGen Weather Information Systems, the NextGen Avionics Roadmap, and NextGen Safety Management.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

September Working Group Co-Chair Meeting

The September meeting of the Working Group Co-Chairs was held on September 9 at the JPDO.  The meeting focused on the Study Team approach that will be applied to a few of the scheduled FY10/11 Working Group Tasks (for those with KSN access, look here for a complete list of those tasks).  The Study Team concept is to advance high priority areas (e.g., Trajectory Based Operations, or TBO) that cross multiple Working Groups, using a scenario/use case process.  Study Teams will be organized under the JPDO Integration Manager and will include Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) from the Working Groups.  The SME’s participate in the process (workshops) to provide key expertise to develop content.  JPDO provides contractor support to facilitate the structured scenario/use case process, and develop the working documents.  The Study Team and Working Groups review all content.  The goal is to produce results that can be readily integrated back into NextGen planning products contained in the Joint Planning Environment (JPE).  Improved definition of far-term TBO will be the first Study Team to stand up and use this process.

The scenario/use case process provides an avenue for exploring topics of interest as to how the NextGen enterprise may operate at a relatively detailed level. For example, an operational scenario could be a commercial flight from a high density airport that encounters adverse weather and navigation failures en-route. The point of the scenario could be to explore the impact of off-nominal conditions and failure modes on the ability to execute trajectory based operations. Use case analysis techniques allow the scenario to be mapped to elements of the JPE, such as the Operational Improvements contained in the Integrated Work Plan (IWP). Once the detailed mapping is complete, various analyses can be executed. For example, validation analyses that may look for gaps and mis-alignments between what is required to execute the scenario and what the plan forecasts, the enterprise would be able to support. Other examples would be the derivation of more detailed performance targets, or robust analysis of alternative architectures. The findings of such analyses can then be put in the queue of the change management process for validating updates to the multi-agency NextGen Plan. Findings can also document technical, policy, organizational, or other issues that need further exploration through more in-depth research and analysis.

The Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Strategic Study that was recently completed developed and used the scenario/use case process to great success.  The Study Team briefing that provides greater detail of the scenario/use case process can be found here.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

NASA Planning Systems-Level Research for Environmental Impact Mitigation

Reducing aviation’s impact on the environment is a major goal of NextGen.  In the near- to mid-term, reductions in noise, emissions, and fuel-use can be made with the current and evolving fleet through operational improvements, such as more direct routing and optimized profile descents (see the JPE, Operational Improvements 0309, 0311 and 0325, for more information).  However, in the mid- to long-run, with the advent of new fuels and new aircraft design and insertion, more substantial impacts can be achieved.  NASA is planning new systems-level research to mature the most promising vehicle technologies, and achieve technology transition to industry.  Look here for a series of presentations that were provided to the National Research Council. These presentations detail this planning, and describe changes to the structure of the NASA Airspace Systems program to emphasize more systems-level research.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

JPE Adds Customized Google Search

The Joint Planning Environment (JPE) can now automatically link you to relevant Web-based information on all NextGen Operational Improvements.  The JPE uses Google Custom Search and Google Scholar capabilities with carefully designed key words associated with each Operational Improvement, to give JPE users a “one-step” literature search capability.  This capability can be accessed on each Operational Improvement page in the JPE.  Just look below the “Attributes” table on any Operational Improvement page to find the clickable “Google References” and “Google Scholar References” buttons.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

NASA Holds Second User and Stakeholder Workshop

JPDO participated with other users and stakeholders in NASA’s second workshop on the “Integration of Advanced Concepts and Vehicles into NextGen NRA.”   In an earlier post, I described the objective of this NASA project.  In this workshop, the Sensis and Raytheon teams described their vehicle design efforts, business case developments, airspace integration analyses, and safety analyses.  The two teams took very different approaches to the project.  I would describe the Sensis approach as modeling and simulation centric, while the Raytheon team took an architectural analysis approach.  In both cases, JPDO should receive substantial value from this NASA investment since both teams are utilizing largely the same tool sets as the JPDO, including, in the case of the Raytheon team, the Joint Planning Environment.  These studies will both produce results that the JPDO can use to help update NextGen plans, as well as prove out analysis frameworks that JPDO can take advantage of in the future.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

NASA Airspace Systems Program Review

I participated in a review of NASA’s Airspace Systems Program (http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/programs_asp.htm) last Friday.  The objective of the program is to develop and demonstrate future concepts, capabilities, and technologies that will enable major increases in air traffic management effectiveness, flexibility, and efficiency, while maintaining safety, to meet capacity and mobility requirements of NextGen.  The review detailed program progress and partnership activities and highlighted technical accomplishments.  Partnership activities include the programs participation in JPDO working groups and the NASA – FAA – JPDO Research Transition Teams.  Technical accomplishments were reviewed in a variety of technical areas, including flight deck merging and spacing, integrated weather information into ATM decision support tools, dynamic airspace configuration management, wake vortex detection, prediction and spacing, airport surface trajectory management, and, trajectory prediction and synthesis.  Across the board, the work has been demonstrated to be well aligned with the JPDO developed NextGen planning documents (available on the Joint Planning Environment http://jpe.jpdo.gov/ee/) and is making substantial technical progress.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

Configuration Management for Key JPDO Documents

Some of the key foundational documents that have been published by the JPDO over the past year are coming under a structured Configuration Management (CM) process. Once a proposed change or comment to one of the documents has been submitted, it enters the CM process.  The potential change is assigned to a reviewer who determines impact, extent, and issues that would result from the proposed change and proposes an initial resolution to the Change Control Board (CCB).  The CCB then adjudicates the proposed change and decides on a disposition for the proposal. If the disposition results in a change being accepted, the change is implemented and verified, and subsequently published in the next release/update of the document.  Some of the items that are anticipated to be under the new CM process include:

• Any Element in the JPE (ConOps, EA, and IWP)
• Joint Planning Framework (i.e., the metamodel)
• Approved CM Plan and CCB Charter

Other items will be included as appropriate.  For more detailed information on the CM process including the CM Plan and CCB Charter, go here (you’ll need access to KSN) under the Deliverables library.

Edgar G. Waggoner, D.Sc.
JPDO Director, Interagency Architecture and Engineering Division

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