CUSTOMIZABLE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS DASHBOARD AND ALERTS, AND ASSOCIATED SYSTEMS AND METHODS

• US 20100042445A1
• Filed: 11/05/2007
• Published: 02/18/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Original Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Inventors: Nicosia, Christopher P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,990,101 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/40 of multimedia data, e.g. slideshows comprising image and additional audio data retrieval of still image data G06F16/50; retrieval of audio data G06F16/60; retrieval of video data G06F16/70
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063114 Status monitoring or status determination for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/30 Transportation; Communications
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/40 Business processes related to the transportation industry shipping G06Q10/083
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 5/0013 with a ground station
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

A customizable situational awareness system is described that allows a user to customize the type of information that the user receives through a user interface, e.g., a dashboard, displayed by the system. In particular embodiments, the system can allow the user to configure alerts that are sent to the user'"'"'s mobile or other device based on situational awareness events. In further embodiments, the customizable situational awareness system receives user configuration data related to flight events, maintenance events, and alerts. When the system receives situational awareness data, the system can retrieve the user'"'"'s configuration data and display the situational awareness data based on the user'"'"'s configuration data. Thus, aspects of the customizable situational awareness system allow the user to access information that is more relevant to the user and to filter out less relevant information.

Claims

1. An aircraft situational awareness system, comprising:

a plurality of airline enterprise systems;

an integration system coupled to the plurality of enterprise systems and configured to receive data relating to aircraft situational awareness from the enterprise systems;

a decision support system coupled to the integration system and configured to correlate situational information received from one or more of the enterprise systems with one or more business rules received from the integration system, the decision support system further being configured to generate an aircraft situational awareness data set from the correlated data and process the aircraft situational awareness data set in view of one or more user-modifiable user profiles; and

a user interface coupled to the integration system and the decision support system, the user interface being configured to display a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set based, at least in part, on the one or more user profiles.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the user interface is further configured to:

receive a request from a user to view customization options for customizing the displayable view of the aircraft situational awareness data;

display a customization user interface having options for configuring the display of at least flight events, maintenance events, and alert messages;

receive one or more preference selections from the user based on the displayed options;

store the preference selections received from the user in a nonvolatile storage device; and

display the view of the aircraft situational awareness data set based on the stored preference selections of the user.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the user interface is configured to display a view of the aircraft situational awareness data for one or more selected aircraft within a particular fleet of aircraft.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the user interface is configured to correlate the timing of actual events with one or more scheduled events to generate a timing schedule for each aircraft'"'"'s departure and arrival.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the user interface is configured to generate real-time alerts of deviations between a predetermined operational plan and the timing of actual day-of-operations events.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the user interface is configured to generate and display a data set for one or more of maintenance operations users, airline flight operations center users, airline management users, station operations users, vendor operations users, and passenger services users.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the data received from the airline enterprise systems includes data related to a condition of an aircraft in need of one or more resources, and wherein the decision support system is further configured to provide at least one recommendation to the user interface with data related to how best to address the conditions associated with the aircraft.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the user interface is configured to display a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set in real-time to all affected users.

9. The system of claim 1 further comprising a generate alerts component configured to send alerts to users by, for each alert, receiving alert data, identifying users whose profiles indicate that the user should receive the alert, and sending the alert to a mobile device associated with each identified user.

10. A method for providing an enterprise with situational awareness data for conditions related to aircraft departure, the method comprising:

receiving data from a plurality of airline enterprise systems related to one or more events that can affect conditions related to an aircraft'"'"'s departure;

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

generating an aircraft departure situational awareness data set from the correlated data and processing the aircraft departure situational awareness data set in view of one or more user-customizable user profiles; and

displaying a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set to a user based, at least in part, on the user profile associated with the user.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein receiving data from a plurality of airline enterprise systems comprises:

receiving data from a first portion of the airline enterprise systems that are located on board aircraft; and

receiving data from a second portion of the airline enterprise systems that are ground based, including at least one of an airline-based system, an airport-based system, and air traffic service providers.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein displaying a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set comprises displaying a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set that is relevant for a task performed by the user directed to the aircraft'"'"'s departure.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein displaying a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set comprises displaying a view of the aircraft situational awareness data set in real-time to multiple users.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein receiving data from a plurality of airline enterprise systems comprise receiving data from one or more of airline management and operations, maintenance operations, aircraft, airport management and operations, aircraft suppliers, regulatory authorities and independent airport service providers.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein receiving data related to one or more events that can affect conditions related to an aircraft'"'"'s departure comprises receiving at least one of status tracking information and operational planning information from at least one of an airplane, an airport, and an airline.

16. The method of claim 10 further comprising receiving a selection of displayed situational awareness data from the user and navigating to an external application based on the selected situational awareness data.

17. The method of claim 10 wherein receiving data comprises receiving data from at least one of a Terminal Wireless LAN Unit, a Crew Wireless LAN Unit, and ACARS.

18. The method of claim 10 wherein the view of the aircraft situational awareness data comprises an aircraft identification area with a chart of aircraft identified by tail numbers.

19. The method of claim 10 wherein the displayed view of the aircraft situational awareness data filters out at least some situational awareness data based on the user profile associated with the user.

20. The method of claim 10 further comprising sending an alert message to a mobile device associated with the user based on the user profile associated with the user and including at least a portion of the situational awareness data.

21. A computer-readable storage medium encoded with instructions for controlling a computer system to receive customizations to a displayable view of aircraft situational awareness data, by a method comprising:

receiving a request from a user to view customization options for customizing the displayable view of the aircraft situational awareness data;

displaying a customization user interface having options for configuring the display of at least flight events, maintenance events, and alert messages;

receiving one or more preference selections from the user based on the displayed options;

storing the preference selections received from the user in a nonvolatile storage device; and

displaying a situational awareness user interface based on the stored preference selections of the user.

22. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein displaying a situational awareness user interface comprises displaying the user interface through a web portal containing aircraft information related to the situational awareness data.

23. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein receiving one or more preference selections comprises receiving a time range of events to display in the situational awareness user interface.

24. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein receiving one or more preference selections comprises receiving a selection of event types to display in the situational awareness user interface.

25. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein receiving one or more preference selections comprises receiving a selection of tail numbers to display in the situational awareness user interface.