July-August 2011 - Aeromag

they spend there, their speed, RCS (related
to size), heading, etc. Moderate and or
severe BASH alert logic are established and
ground-truthed by the wildlife personnel
in consultation with airspace managers for
each and every safety exclusion zone to
reflect local risk conditions. Such a display
can be beneficial for airport operations
rooms, the Wing and even in the tower
cab for air traffic controllers. This tool is
easy to interpret with just a quick visual
glance and, hence, works well in situation
rooms where operators are extremely
busy with other tasks and cannot afford
the time to stare at a screen or review text
messages. A safety exclusion zone on the
display lights up yellow for moderate and
red for severe BASH levels in response to
the respective alert logic. When a zone/
alert is triggered, the bird tracks that
triggered the alert also appear on the
display so operators know precisely where
the birds are within the breached zone. If
there are no zones that are triggered at
the moderate or severe level, the display
is blank indicating that the BASH is low
everywhere.
Historical tools
Strategic tools include accumulated
avian traffic patterns, bird abundance
and distribution patterns, and an
airport-based dynamic BASH advisory.
Strategic tools exploit historical bird
track data recorded minutes to years
prior to characterize spatial and temporal
patterns of abundance, movements, and
their deviations from long-term baselines.
Since avian patterns are related to the
underlying geographic features of the
airfield and surrounding areas, importing
tracks into geographical information
systems (GIS) can provide users with
tools they are already familiar with to
investigate patterns.
Automatic generation of web-based,
interactive, information products can
quickly reveal patterns to users and
provide them with quantitative metrics
in support of their wildlife and airfield
management efforts. For example,
hourly, plan-view, track accumulations can
be reviewed after the fact and can easily
reveal visually resident bird movements,
commuter movements, and migration.
Temporal variations in bird activity are
easily visualized and quantified using
histograms (see figure). Daily abundance
graphs (on a 24-hour scale, calculated
every 15 minutes or every hour) reveal
daytime and nighttime activity, with
transitions around dawn and dusk.
Standard Accipiter® AR-2 Avian Radar with dish and array antennas
Interior workspace
Real-time TrackViewer display showing bird tracks with size (units are dBm2) indicated
on the head of the track. Can also display speed, height and Track-ID. Eight bird
exclusion zones defined in this example around the pattern, each zone programmed to
automatically issue BASH alerts. No alert is issued for a low. A particular alert is issued
for a moderate or severe. Thresholds for each zone are programmed based on userdefine
target behavior in each zone. Alerts from any number of radars are transmitted
to the BASH Viewer software for integration and display.
Graphs can be easily calculated for a
particular day, or averaged over a month,
for example. For longer term trends in
abundance, yearly views by week or
month reveal seasonal variations, and
allow or comparisons from year to year
to be used in measuring, for example,
the effectiveness of habitat alterations in
reducing bird populations.
Height distributions can be presented in
a similar fashion and provide an effective
way to understand altitude concentrations
around an airfield.
In the same way that track data are stored
indefinitely, 24/7/365, so are BASH alerts,
suitably named and date/time stamped. As
a result, spatial and temporal patterns (i.e.,
against time of day, season, year-to-year)
associated with local moderate and severe
alerts can be generated and analyzed in
support of flight planning and wildlife
management. The intrusion statistics are
available for each safety exclusion zone so
that a dynamic (i.e., automatically updated
by the avian radar over time to adjust to
long-term environmental and habitat
changes), high-resolution, localized, BASH
advisory system can be developed and
maintained for each facility. After a year
or two of data collection to establish an
operating baseline, the BASH advisory can
provide information for all stakeholders, for
Real-time BASH Viewer display which receives automatically-generated moderate and
severe alerts from any number of radars and integrates them into a single user display.
Zones light-up yellow for moderate and red for severe in response to issued BASH alerts.
Easy-to-interpret display gives immediate situational awareness of developing hazards.
flight planning, for wildlife management
planning, and for heightened situational
awareness at the entire facility. Reduced
numbers of moderate and severe,
localized, BASH alert counts compared to
Dish antennas provide 3D lat, long,
height information and allow us to
optimize radar coverage to cover
complete aircraft pattern where
hazards can occur. Resulting BASH
alerts are localized in 3D space and
hence alert to actual threats to
aircraft.
the baseline would be a strong indicator of
risk reduction and improvement in flight
safety. Increases, on the other hand, will
direct managers to the local areas around
the airfield that require attention.
A e r o m a g 42
A e r o m a g 43