DSAT: Data Storage and Analytics Tool

The aim of this project is the development a large data warehousing and analysis tool for air traffic management (ATM) research that can be accessed by users through intuitive web-based User Interface (UI). DSAT is designed to support requirements of a variety of ATM users, from data handlers interested in maintaining data quality to researchers looking for patterns in acquired data to analysts who need to compute basic metrics on a particular subset of data to managers who need to visualize and report results from a particular analysis. DSAT is a multi-level, multi-objective tool for big data analysis that extracts ATM data from a variety of ATM data stores and prepares it for holistic analysis within an actionable timeline. At this time no turnkey software exists that supports all levels of data handling from storage to reporting for ATM research DSAT serves the purpose of a variety of users through a set of tools customized to handle different types of ATM analysis for different types of users. In particular, DSAT is a (i) data storage tool, (ii) data analysis tool, and (iii) visualization and reporting tool all wrapped into one.

Researchers at NASA are experienced in using data from a number of sources towards their project objectives. Currently they are forced to deal with each data source individually which is a very manual process prone to errors and duplications. DSAT provides a standard efficient process for not only data import, and parsing but also storing it on a platform of choice, be it cloud or a remote hard disk. It saves researchers from having to write yet another import script or tool for their data import needs. This single aspect of DSAT alone can save NASA valuable resources and drastically reduce the errors in data import and warehousing. The researchers can use the tool compute standard metrics are regularly used for any research project. Simple metrics such as flight count, fleet mix, level of equipage etc. are used regularly and can be initiated from within DSAT once the data import has completed. DSAT's visualization features allow researchers to call upon previously chose set of chart and graphs conveniently thus saving more time and effort.

The data storing, analyzing and visualizing capabilities are attractive to researchers from any organization that work with large amount of heterogeneous data. DSAT is equally applicable for research projects at other government agencies including FAA and DoD and commercial enterprises including airlines, and research institutes. For these agencies the set of metrics and data parsers would be modified but the framework would remain the same.

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.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.