METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR REAL-TIME ENHANCED SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

• US 20080010004A1
• Filed: 07/10/2006
• Published: 01/10/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Original Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Inventors: Hall, Lee S., Small, Gregory J., Jain, Rajit
• Granted Patent: US 7,747,382 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/120
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 5/00 Traffic control systems for aircraft , e.g. air-traffic control [ATC]

Abstract

A system and method of automatically advising an individual, in real-time, of all available facts related to a current situation. The method is facilitated by a system, which automatically retrieves data related to a situation from a plurality of aviation enterprise systems, processes the data retrieved in real time and generates a situational awareness data that is presented in an optimal format to a user on an interface device. Processing of the data retrieved from the plurality of aviation enterprise systems comprises correlating the data in accordance with business rules and interpreting the data in view of previously stored historical information that relates to the situation. The situational awareness data generated is further processed in view of a user profile in order to create a viewable situational awareness data that has been optimized for presentation to an identified user of the system in accordance with the user profile.

Claims

1. A method of advising an individual of available facts related to a current situation, said method comprising:

accessing data related to the current situation received from a plurality of enterprise systems in real time, a first portion of the enterprise systems on board aircraft, and a second portion of the enterprise systems being ground based;

correlating the data in accordance with one or more business rules;

interpreting the correlated data in view of historical data and thereby generating a situational awareness data set;

processing the situational awareness data set in view of a profile in order to create a viewable situational awareness data set that has been optimized in view of the profile; and

presenting the viewable situational awareness data set to the individual.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving data from the enterprise systems on a continuous basis.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein receiving data from the enterprise systems on a continuous basis comprises receiving data from one or more of airline operations, maintenance, aircraft in flight, airport operations, airline management, aircraft suppliers, and third party suppliers.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein accessing the data from the plurality of enterprise systems comprises:

identifying the data within the plurality of enterprise systems that is associated with the current situation; and

retrieving the identified data.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein identifying the data within the plurality of enterprise systems associated with the current situation comprises identifying one or more of flight crew, cabin crew, mechanics, baggage handlers, gate agents, reservation agents, customer service agents, airline operations staff, maintenance operations staff, station operation staff, aircraft assets, hanger bays, tools, ground equipment, and terminal gates that are associated with the current situation.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein identifying the data within the plurality of enterprise systems is performed in accordance with a defined set of data definitions.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the situational awareness data set includes filtering the situational awareness data set in accordance with the profile so that the information contained within the viewable situational awareness data is the information most relevant to the profile.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the viewable situational awareness data set includes at least one proposed response to the current situation.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the at least one proposed response is generated from an application of said business rules and said historical data to said data related to the current situation.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the situational awareness data set comprises:

identifying any trends in the historical data; and

creating a presentation for the individual that addresses the trends.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein correlating the data in accordance with one or more business rules comprises:

defining one or more business goals within the business rules; and

assessing the received data against the business goals.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein accessing data related to the current situation comprises at least one of capturing the data in a received message and extracting the data from a data stream.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein accessing data related to the current situation comprises at least one of receiving data from at least one airborne system.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein interpreting the correlated data in view of historical data comprises utilizing the historical data to identify trends in the situational awareness data set.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the situational awareness data set in view of a profile comprises filtering the situational awareness data set in accordance with the profile so that the information contained within the viewable situational awareness data set is the information most relevant to the profile.

20. The method of claim 15 wherein generating user optimized situational awareness data comprises creating custom views of the situational awareness data according to user profiles.

21. The method of claim 20 wherein creating custom views of the situational awareness data according to user profiles comprises creating at least one global unified view for one or more of resource utilization, flight following, schedule buffer times and at least one local, specific view for one or more of facility, aircraft type, and personnel type.

16. A method of presenting a user specific situational awareness data set to a user networked to a system, wherein the user specific situational awareness data set presented is defined by a profile of a user accessing the system, said method comprising:

retrieving data from a plurality of enterprise systems;

processing the data in accordance with one or more business rules and in view of historical data;

generating a situational awareness data set from the processed data;

filtering the situational awareness data in response to interface presentation parameters defined by the profile of the user;

generating user optimized situational awareness data; and

presenting the user optimized situational awareness data through a user interface.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein generating user optimized situational awareness data comprises determining which situational awareness data is most relevant to the profile of the user and a situation the user is to address.

18. The method of claim 16 wherein generating a situational awareness data set from the processed data comprises utilizing the historical data to interpret current situational awareness data.

19. The method of claim 16 wherein processing the data in accordance with one or more business rules and in view of historical data comprises identifying trends in the historical data.

22. A situational awareness system comprising:

a user interface;

a plurality of enterprise systems;

an integration system networked to said interface and configured to receive situational awareness data from said plurality of enterprise systems;

a decision support system integrated with said integration system and said user interface, said decision support system operatively configured to correlate situational information received from each of said plurality of enterprise systems with information received from said integration system, said decision support system further configured to process the received information applying business rules and historical data, and generate a situational awareness data set for transmission to said interface.

23. The system of claim 22 wherein said decision support system comprises data for operatively configuring the situational awareness data set based on an input to said interface, the input causing said situational awareness system to generate the situational awareness data set utilizing data relevant to the input.

24. The system of claim 22 wherein said integration system is programmed to generate the situational awareness data set in accordance with a profile associated with a user accessing said situational awareness system via said interface.

25. The system of claim 22 wherein said integration system is configured to generate the situational awareness data set based on the data received from said enterprise systems that is related to a current situation as indicated in the data received from one or more of said enterprise systems.

26. The system of claim 25 wherein said integration system is programmed to:

identify that data received from said plurality of enterprise systems associated with a current situation;

retrieve the identified data; and

correlate the identified data with one or more of business rules, historical data, and a user profile to generate a relevant situational awareness data set.

27. The system of claim 26, said system configured to generate a relevant situational awareness data set that comprises at least one global unified view for one or more of resource utilization, flight following, schedule buffer times and at least one local, specific view for one or more of facility, aircraft type, and personnel type.

28. The system of claim 22 wherein said plurality of enterprise systems comprises one or more of airline operations systems, aircraft maintenance systems, systems onboard aircraft, airport operations systems, airline management systems, aircraft supplier systems, and third party supplier systems.

29. The system of claim 22 wherein at least one of said decision support system and said integration system is configured to generate, using the situational awareness data set, and output, through said interface, one or suggestions for addressing a situation identified from the situational information received from said enterprise systems.

30. The system of claim 22 wherein the situational awareness data set includes one or more of maintenance fault messaging data, inventory data, ETOPS rules, flight schedules, aircraft documentation, documentation on resources including people equipment and facilities, and maintenance plans.