Ontology generation for flight safety messages in air traffic management

Mahdi Yousefzadeh Aghdam,Seyed Javad Mahdavi Chabok,Seyed Reza Kamel Tabbakh,Maryam Kheyrabadi

doi:10.1186/s40537-021-00449-3

Abstract

The analysis of various data is a challenging issue in the field of air traffic flow management (ATFM). Managing a large volume of data and their correct interpretation plays a key role in the prevention of air accidents, human errors, and flight interactions. In general, pilots and flight navigators deal with massive and variety information, including flight safety messages, meteorological messages, aviation notes for air man (NOTAMs) and etc. Therefore relationship between Heterogeneous big data is problem. Recently, the semantic web has been recognized as a novel foundation of knowledge management that relies on ontology (concept modeling language). The present study aimed to propose an efficient infrastructure for ATMs by defining the concepts, rules, and relationships between the concepts related to the scope of flight information. To this end, we designed and implemented the ontology of flight safety messages, which included an important part of flight operation information. In this research, the internet protocol suite (IPS)-based aviation networks and methontology methodology were exploited for the engineering of the ontology of flight messages. In addition, the implementation process was carried out using the Protégé software. The analysis of the system was performed using the actual data of Mashhad Airport, Iran. Finally, the implementation of the ontology of flight messages was demonstrated after a case study of several flight examples. The developed ontology could be incorporated into the foundation of an aeronautical telecommunication network (ATN) aviation network as an application.

Highlights

Today, the growth of human communities and the increasing need for travel have led to more transfer of products
The ontology could be directly used by pilots, flight staff, flight dispatchers, air traffic controllers, aviation information networks, and systems based on web and TCP-IP (e.g., aeronautical telecommunication network (ATN))
The Methontology framework enables the construction of ontologies at the knowledge level and encompasses the identification of the ontology development process, as well as a lifecycle based on evolving prototypes and specific techniques for the description of the processes

Summary

Introduction

The growth of human communities and the increasing need for travel have led to more transfer of products. Increased flights and air travel require an efficient air traffic flow management (ATFM) system. An important issue regarding ATFM is the arrangement of the flight traffic sequence for preventing the interference and delay of flights. The analysis of this information is extremely difficult and mostly associated with human error. Any mistakes in the interpretation and analysis of aviation data (especially flight safety messages) may lead to air accidents and cause irreparable financial and human damages

Methods

Conclusion