The inspiring city of Gaudi: a vibrant, self-centred metropolis right on the Mediterranean Sea. This week the European-US ATM R&D conference was held in the direct neighbourhood of las Ramblas, Barcelona's amusement strip crowded day and night with its endless streams of tourists.
The conference featured many interesting ATM research results. These came from the areas of Innovative Research, Performance Management, Safety, Airport Management, Airspace Management, Human Factors, Environment, Air-Ground Integration, Network Management, and the new category of Finance and Deployment.
In the concluding session it was noted that much of what was presented concerned research on already existing concepts and technologies, which could be a sign of rather market-driven R&D. Nevertheless, about a third of the papers looked at innovative ideas generated on the basis of the needs of SESAR and NextGen, the European-US future air transportation system initiatives calling for major changes in the current ATM system to cope with future demand.
Plenary discussions following the concluding remarks of Eurocontrol and the FAA discussed the reasons for the current focus of ATM research on more market-driven topics and whether a more integrated approach between the US and Europe was possible despite the somewhat different kind of innovation needs in both regions of the world. Certainly, knowledge and awareness of what has been done in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic was considered desirable. The conference helped to promote the issue, however, this was not really reflected in the papers. Therefore, future research activities should also highlight common achievements, also for the sake of harmonising the approaches for solving the imminent problems in air traffic congestion in both systems.
The paper on Resolution Advisory Downlink that was written by Stan Drozdowski and Doris Dehn from Eurocontrol together with Bernd Lorenz and myself won the best paper award in the ATM safety conference track. The best conference paper award was attributed to a paper on an analysis method for new ATM concepts being applied to a multi-sector planner in US airspace. It was written by Kevin Corker, Paul Lee, and Tom Prevot from San Jose State University together with Diana Liang from the FAA.
