System Wide Analysis Network for In-Time Safety Monitoring

Our innovation offers NASA and the aviation community a robust, extensible data processing and analysis infrastructure that supports near-real-time (NRT) monitoring of safety metrics and predictive analytics. The System Wide Analysis Network for Safety (SWANS) will provide continuous measurement of risk precursors and events in terminal areas around the NAS. With updates every five minutes, SWANS will provide insight into safety margin trends and identify increases in risk events at specific locations. These changes may indicate changes in airspace risk status, and identify possible procedural or other deficiencies. Our innovation provides a data processing, distribution, and display infrastructure for adding other data sources and algorithms to measure and predict risk. SWANS can also accommodate Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and other non-traditional operations and their interactions with traditional flight operations.

The SWANS concept supports several NASA System Wide Safety (SWS) Project milestones: domain-specific safety monitoring and alerting tools; integrated predictive technologies with domain-level applications; and adaptive in-time safety threat management. SWANS delivers terminal area safety monitoring alerting and with planned development will enable predictive technologies in the terminal domain.

SWANS has commercial aviation benefits by giving operators an important, easy to deploy monitoring and analysis tool to identify operational risks. A SWANS capability in non-traditional airspace is also needed by industry, as the FAA has indicated that it does not intend to provide the constant airspace management and safety monitoring provided in traditional airspace.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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