 |
|
 |
|
| |
|
Case Study: Improving Flight Safety Analysis
Introduction
In 1997 the United States Congress set a goal to
improve flight safety by 80% within 10 years. As
part of this goal the Federal Aviation Administration
and NASA partnered with the Battelle Memorial
Institute, a science and technology enterprise that
develops innovations and solutions for the most
successful companies in the world. Their task was
to create the Aviation Performance Measuring
System (APMS), a software project to be managed
by NASA. The APMS mission is to increase flight
safety by developing the next generation of
advanced tools for flight data analysis and
interpretation, and make those tools available to
the industry.
Challenge
APMS technologies enable airline carriers to
analyze the flight data in order to identify safety
trends and increase flight reliability. Human Flight
Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) analysts
must monitor hundreds of daily flights for
potentially significant events. The solution would
need to provide understanding and insight into
giga-bytes of flight data. Project leaders decided to
include advanced data visualization technology as
part of the APMS solution.
Seeking to add an additional level of technology
and expertise, ProWorks was contacted by
Battelle, the prime contractor on the project.
ProWorks partnered with Battelle and joined the
APMS team as a sub-contractor. Initially,
ProWorks utilized their development proficiency
and self designed data visualization technologies
to contribute to the project. Later, the APMS project
leaders recognized ProWorks' long term value to
the project and assigned Gary Prothero, the
president of ProWorks as the APMS Technical Lead.
How ProWorks Delivered
ProWorks collaborated with Battelle and NASA to
integrate advanced statistical science, real-world
industry experience with Microsoft's latest .NET
technology to develop The Morning Report, a
leading-edge software system. The Morning
Report receives giga-bytes of sensor data from
flight recorders, aggregates that data, then
analysis that identifies flights which are statistically
unique. The most extreme flights are ranked and
presented on a daily basis in order of their
atypicality through a user friendly interface. These
needle-in-the-haystack flights may then be further
investigated by Flight Operations Quality
Assurance (FOQA) analysts. In addition, The
Morning Report includes tools to assist the FOQA
team with the identification of these atypical flights
as operationally significant.
In the summer of 2004, Gary Prothero from
ProWorks was on hand with Battelle and NASA
officials to hand off The Morning Report solution to
Sagem, a high technology enterprise with industry
leading aviation products. Sagem is the first to
license The Morning Report and will include it as
part of their aviation solutions.
High Quality Solution
With The Morning Report, FOQA experts are able
to more effectively identify potentially unsafe flights
and more efficiently concentrate their attention and
efforts. Analysts connect to thousands of flight
records through a user friendly interface and are
better able to understand the data through
innovative data visualization techniques. The
Morning Report project exemplifies ProWorks'
capacity to team with other organizations in order
to deliver leading edge solutions that drastically
improve critical systems and processes.
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Papers & Presentations
DOE Presentation
'Morning Report' Summary
Customer Intelligence
Consulting Services
|
| Case Studies
We have provided solutions for companies such as:
• Battelle Memorial...
• TeraSoft, Inc.
• Pacific Bell Broadband...
View Case Studies >
|
Customer Comments
"The ProWorks development
process is concise and
on-time. For our project,
they worked from a loosely
defined goal and turned it
into a product we were able
to bring to market in a very
reasonable amount of time and
dollars."
Craig Borghesani
Terasoft, Inc.
Cincinnati, OH
|
| |
|
|
