TECH TALK I doubt that anyone at ARPA/DARPA or any of the
research institutions could have foreseen even a small portion of the eventual use of the Internet during the initial startup of the ARPANET. Due to the U.S. government opening up the closed ARPANET to an open network over time, and the adoption of it by commercial interests (and especially entrepreneurial entities), it has come to change the world. Perhaps it was fortuitous that DARPA had control over this initially and allowed its eventual commercialization (as DARPA and its predecessor agency, ARPA, are prone to do with cutting-edge developments), else it may never have spawned the use of e-mail (and I would never receive daily messages from supposed Canadian pharmacies trying to sell me generic Viagra), or the worldwide Web. Think of all of the jobs and companies and the resulting innovations this has spawned.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NEXTGEN? As you are well aware, the FAA is slowly rolling out NextGen with foot dragging from the government relative to funding, and to reluctance by some of the aviation community in regards to adoption. This is a normal reaction to a new paradigm in any industry anywhere in the world. Essentially, we are replacing an aged manually-intensive system based upon radar and voice communications with a (rather) automated data-driven system based upon GPS satellite signals and automated aircraft positional information. The projected return-on-investment (ROI) is based upon being better able to manage larger amounts of aircraft in the sky, route them more directly, and increase the safety of all. All of this is needed, and all of it should be able to be accomplished (at least once the security concerns of GPS and ADS-B are addressed). As the telegraph, telephone and Internet have demonstrated, we can expect NextGen to evolve as well. It can be argued that NextGen is more of a closed system (primarily for safety concerns) than the other examples, but that is not necessarily true. It can be demonstrated that each of the other mechanisms could have been considered closed systems initially, but each of these changed course in unforeseen ways. Innovation can only flourish where the opportunity for it to do so is welcomed, else inventors and dreamers will not push the envelope and help a mechanism evolve. Thus, the FAA must take lessons learned from these earlier efforts and allow for industry to make use of NextGen to solve industry business problems (or create them and then solve them). Since we will able to receive automated up-to-date, semi-real-time positional (and other) information from a majority of aircraft in a few years, something which was not available in the recent past, we will be able to apply big data and mobile-driven applications from this new set of information rather soon.
GIMME AN EXAMPLE OF THIS, O SEER I can almost sense some skepticism from you readers, and rightfully so. Any idea which cannot be defended in a good debate cannot be considered worthwhile. I have outlined a number of potentially viable ideas which might come about (and I might be calling a venture capitalist to fund some of this myself):
1. Drone-supplied traffic management. With the forthcoming invasion of UAVs entering the airspace in 2015, one of the expected uses is by local governments for various purposes. One of these could make for better traffic congestion reporting by providing visuals of key highways and interchanges. We already have Web sites which have average speeds reported, helping commuters know where to avoid (if they check a computer before they leave for a commute), or via traffic-data-enabled GPS devices in cars. Both of these are barely trusted, as I can personally attest to while living in Los Angeles. I have learned to not always have full confidence in either one of these, since they do not provide perfectly correct data (and I end up being stuck in a traffic jam I could have potentially routed around). If only I could launch an app on my smartphone or my vehicle’s infotainment system (which connects to my phone’s cellular provider network) and VIEW a real-time video feed from a drone that did nothing but fly over key highways, and make a better traffic-avoidance decision on whether the carpool lanes are also jammed. NextGen creates the capability for such drones to operate safely in such an environment, and such services could potentially be provided by competing commercial drone operation companies (AvoidTraffic. com versus
RouteMe.com).
2. Another drone example, fire-suppression updates to homeowners and others in a fire area. Imagine if your community or region (or some commercial provider) could supply you with an app that provided the exact location of all fire-fighting aircraft and where they are dropping water or chemicals, as well as firefighters and their ground vehicles. (OK, this is not part of NextGen, but it is a key part of the my app: ‘Where’s The Fire, Dude?’). If you are located near an area where a major brushfire has broken out, this type of near-real-time information could be life saving. Such aircraft could easily be augmented to report their exact coordinates of water drops, so anyone could see that there is a major fire and its potential course. Imagine if video feeds could also be sent by the aircraft to ground networks, which then send this out to anyone in an affected area. Drones could also be used to assess the damage quickly once such fires were extinguished and speed up aid to those affected. Once again, not all of this is purely enabled by NextGen, but it plays a part by enabling the aviation portion to be viable.
11.12 2013
28
DOMmagazine
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