(IVAR) - Final Report - Strategic Environmental Research and ...

very high as it has been operating without mishaps for many months. One user limitation
is we were not able to determine the operational health of the radar systems. Alarms, for
those times when the system is malfunctioning should be part of future upgrades similar to
what the FAA now has with its NAVAIDS at SEA. CEAT is the process of
developing protocols for periodic system checks and routine maintenance so the
functional health of each radar can be evaluated before a system degrades to a point
where there is a significant loss in the unit’s ability to detect birds (weak magnetron).
Overall Rating of Remote Display
6. Please rate the following where 1 = poor, 2=fair, 3=good, 4=very good and 5 =
excellent.
The assigned numerical ratings were for the DRP unless specified otherwise:
Display information content 4
Display update rate 3
Display Format 2
Please provide specific comments to support or expand your rating.
Display information content - Overall the DRP is very good for viewing the plots and
tracks from a single radar at a time. We found plot information to be extremely valuable
when displayed in conjunction with the track information for identifying birds circling
tightly or in other ways that may not always be detected by the tracking algorithms. The
GEC had an extremely beneficial feature in that it was able to playback the last hour of
bird tracks within a few minutes. This feature proved extremely helpful in finding
locations on the airfield with the greatest amount of recent bird activity. This information
was of value as it helped us decide where to begin our wildlife observations for conducting
this survey and potentially our future wildlife control work.
Display update rate – Although the GEC does integrate all three radars into one
common display, its real-time update rate of 5 s was double that of the DRP software
display (2.5 s). The value of viewing detections as close to real time as possible is a
function of what we are asking it to do. The use of archived data is of great value to us,
the airport operators, but a lag time of 15 to 20 seconds might very well be too imprecise
to alert the tower or moreover to divert an aircraft on approach to a SEA runway.
Display Format - The tradeoff of using the DRP for this evaluation rather than the GEC,
was its more limited user functionality. Rapidly zooming to an airfield location of interest
was made more difficult with its limited ability to zoom. Because the GEC is specifically
designed around superior user satisfaction and now has the one hour
playback feature, improving its update rate and its ability to display plots as well as tracks
is likely to result in a single preferred remote display system that can show all detections
from all radars simultaneously.
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