Now Landing in Ottawa - A Data Driven Aeronautical Chart
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This presentation will give an overview of the capabilities available in FME that allow NAV CANADA to automate the instrument procedure chart process from source data to publication. FME streamlines the complex process of translating and transforming AIXM 4.5 data following strict guidelines to create charts that conform to ICAO standards. WHY: Higher Quality - To enforce Standards and Specifications built into the process. Productivity Boost – Increased speed of chart creation enables greater throughput. Automation – Minimize human error.
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Now Landing in Ottawa - A Data Driven Aeronautical Chart
- 1. A Data Driven Aeronautical Chart Alejandro Del Balso Philippe Gratton Robert Soun
- 2. Agenda ● Who We Are & What We Do ● The Challenges ● The FME Solution ● Lessons Learned
- 4. What the crew sees
- 5. What they use What we make
- 6. WHO ARE WE?
- 9. ● Current inventory:4500 Procedures ○ 300/year new or overhauled ■ Approximately 70 attributes/procedure ○ 3000 Life cycle changes/year ■ Subset of attributes ● 56 day publication cycle The Challenges Procedure Data Transcribed into Documents Interpreted into Chart 3 2 1
- 10. What we realized Sophisticated Software Sophisticated Output
- 11. Aeronautical Chart The FME Solution CAD Procedure Design Load to the Oracle Master Database Step One Step Two
- 12. Old Workflow – Step One Procedure Forms Procedure Design Microsoft Excel Master Database Manual Data Entry in Master Database Manual Intervention Excel content manually entered in master database Table for Data Entry Manual Entry in Excel and Word/PDF Manual Intervention and interpretation Design elements copied to Excel Design
- 13. Improved Workflow – FME – Step One Table For Validation PDF AIXM Validated Table AIXM 4.5 Master DatabaseMicrosoft Excel Only specific data elements are exported to Excel FME Workbench ETL process from Excel to AIXM 4.5 FME Workbench ETL process from PDF and AIXM 4.5 to Excel Procedure Form Procedure Design
- 14. CAD Procedure Design Load to the Oracle Master Database Step One Step Two Aeronautical Chart The FME Solution
- 15. Master Database Data User Report Export Microsoft Excel Manual Intervention GeoMedia Old Workflow – Step Two Creating SHP Data Export Data Analysis Results Data Export MicroStation User Manual Review & Adjustments PDF Final Results Major processing is done here Only specific data elements are exported to Excel Major drafting of aeronautical charts Formating Data Export
- 16. Manual Data Processing 80% Other Applications 20% Old Workflow – Step Two
- 17. Master Database AIXM 4.5 Snapshot Export FME Workbench Apply standardization MicroStation Make minor edits & adjusments PDF Final Results Export completed charts as PDF Data Analysis & Drafting Export User Manual Review & Adjustments Improved Workflow – FME – Step Two
- 18. Automation 80% Manual Data Processing 20% Improved Workflow – FME – Step Two
- 19. Lessons Learned
- 20. THANK YOU! Rob, Phil, and Alex
Editor's Notes
- Imagine you are flying an airplane, and you want to land somewhere in there; Where’s the airport? Are there mountains we can’t see? How do I know I won’t hit anything Pilots call this “the soup” Once you’re in there, you can’t see outside, and you trust your instruments. Still, how do they know where to go? Rights for picture: CC0 Creative Commons Free for commercial use No attribution required
- “The soup” Give you an idea of the challenge What does Nav do, bigger picture, context, flight safety Volume of data changes, designs, chart changes, LoE, time, 56 day cycle Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
- Hi, my name is Alex and I work for Nav Canada. What Do we Do: “We manage Canada’s airspace Major Business ATC But also: Infrastructure RADAR Navigational Aids Outer Space! Aeronautical Information That’s us Pictures are all part of Nav Canada’s Branding Toolkit
- Tracks are planned based on Terrain Obstacles ATC coordination Picture Source: Nav Canada licenced software screenshot (FPDAM- all shown information is public)
- Then we protect you and decide “How low can you go?” Sophisticated software Picture Source: Nav Canada licenced software screenshot (FPDAM- all shown information is public)
- Lots of manual work Transcription error risk Requires A TON of verification
- Thanks Alex for the introduction, my name is Philippe, I am a Data Analyst in the aeronautical information management group at NAV CANADA and work alongside Alex and Rob Alex, that sophisticated output is called XML, its looks complex, but to the trained eye, its actually structure aeronautical data, but in this case, its not in the structure we want, so why not use FME to fix that
- Here is the Big Picture of what we are trying to achieve with FME The end goal is the chart, but to get there, we first need to populate our master database Our master database sits in the middle of our business, its an oracle database with over 300,000 aeronautical features, from runways and airspaces to procedures and obstacles Data needs to follow schema and business rules, must pass several checks before its committed Once committed, its feeds applications and various systems across NAV CANADA as well as Flight management system in airplanes; and its also clients synchronized with euro database, so data most perfectly mesh with cross border information My objective was to automate the input of procedure data to that database using FME, the next few slides will focus on that first step Into master database first Lines up with business objectives
- Before we dive in on how we used FME, lets have a look at the old workflow, it looks simple, but the goal was to replace those manual process with FME We started with a procedure design, the designer would transcribe certain data elements from the design software to a form (PDF) and excel table, introduce risk of typos, The PDF and excel document is transferred to another group where that data is manually inserted in the master database, again introducing risk of typos, adding time to validate Currently, to maintain quality, we need a large amount of verification which sometimes is a long process which can involved several people and email exchanges The objective, minimize the risk of errors by eliminating the manual steps
- With FME, its looks very similar, we were able to eliminate the two manual steps, therefore greatly reducing the risk of errors and decreasing the time its takes for the data to reach the master database This is how we did it, we started with exporting the procedure design to xml: The xml data follows the AIXM 4.5 schema, which is an exchange model for aeronautical data, designed to enable the management and distribution of aeronautical information data in digital format A single Procedure Export in AIXM4.5 containing approx 7500 features with over 45000 attributes, that a lot of data for a single procedure The aixm file is supplemented with a PDF form, not ideal format to work with, but by converting to text and using regular expressions, I was able to extract what I needed to complete my dataset We only need approx 20 features, representing around 70 attributes changes, since the procedure we exported doesn’t follow our database structure, we needed to select what we needed, recreate some associations, clean the data, generate data for the empty fields, apply some schema and business rules, Sounds simple, but the broke the 10 transformer rule doing so The second workspace: transforms the excel table into an AIXM 4.5 ready for upload to our master database but before it loaded, we compare the aixm file with a data snapshot in order to only introduce and/or modify the required information We started with a process that took 3-4 hours to complete, and with FME, we were able to the load the information to our master database in roughly 20-30, workspace processing time is about 2-3mins total, must of the 20 minutes is the validation process and the export and upload process Once the data in the Master Database, it ready to be charted, my co-worker Rob will focus on that process
- The Importancy of Phil’s Process In order to create this pretty picture (aeronautical chart) Information needs to be stored (where “Master Database” Because information stored here is what drives to create this pretty picture. So before we go further into the FME Solution, lets look at the OLD WORKFLOW
- Built 10 Years ago! The process works (upgrade, spruce it up a bit) Requires multiple applications and lengthy manual operation. A process can take between 4 to 6 hours depending of the difficulty. I see a DUNGEON. With different Stages…Just like a Video Game So the purpose of this video game is to create a map to help me out of the dungeon. Which in this case to create an Aeronautical Chart from information found on the Master Database. We begin Stage 1: Gather information from the Wizard (Information are extracted from the authoritative source into this excel sheet) Stage 2: Then using our wand (microsoft Excel) we decipher thru the information Stage 3: With the information we gather, we go out on an adventure to collect the material required by beating monsters and going thru traps to create (Manual intervention) Stage 4: Dropping all Materials into this magic cauldron (Geomedia) , stir with to synthesize the PAPER which is required to create the map.. Stage 5: Now using all of the power from the magic wand (microstation) for the final time!... Abracadabra… Poof the MAP has been created (Aeronautical Chart) Stage 6: The map has now been created and you can now find your way out of the dungeon.
- So essentially, We have a pile of documents (such as PDF, Word Doc, Excel) That are manually processed by the user To create this Aeronautical Charts
- Anyone of you here remember the game Super Mario Brothers, where we get the flute to warp to different stages. Well….this improved workflow, that’s what happened… we warped using jumping stages because of the new tool that has been offered the Flute (FME) I look at this like a video game dungeon. You notice now there is only 4 stages to beat to get out of the dungeon, a lot faster then the previous dungeon. Stages (video game) Finding and Creating the map out of the dungeon (Whole process) Stage 1: Gather information from the Wizard (Information are extracted from the authoritative source) Stage 2: Simply just throw the information into the Magic Cauldron and poof The paper needed to create the map has been synthesized. Stage 3: Now using all of the power from the magic wand for the final time!... Abracadabra… Poof the MAP has been created (Aeronautical Chart) Stage 4: The map has now been created and you can now find your way out of the dungeon. This process takes between 1 to 2 hours depending of the difficulty. The new improved workflow consist of: Translating AIXM 4.5 XML snapshot and convert to Microstation DGN for Final Output. The idea is to create a process to instance create an Aeronautical Chart By essentially eliminating all the other application by having FME doing all the heavy lifting. Reducing user’s intervention Implementation of Speed Productivity boost. Based on the illustration shown here An AIXM4.5 snapshot is captured here contain attributes such as: Airspace, Runways, Obstacles, Procedure Legs, etc. Keep in mind that attribute coming from AIXM4.5 contains mostly of point vector datas. It is ingested by FME where all the magic happens. Like I mentioned earlier, FME does the heavy lifting. It will take the attribute information and transforms it into: point (waypoints, obstacles, Other aerodromes), line (procedure tracks, missed approach tracks) and Polygons (special use airspace) It will also implement our drafting specifications and business rules. Again reducing user’s intervention. Once the FME major processing is complete normally taking about 5 to 10 mins to draft a whole chart. It export the results into a Microstation DGN file format. Another thing that is great with FME is, it export the results with the appropriate line size, line weight, levels, cells. Now with the exported DGN file, the user will performed their manual review and adjustments. Then Print to PDF…
- Based on the illustration shown here An AIXM4.5 snapshot is captured here contain attributes such as: Airspace, Runways, Obstacles, Procedure Legs, etc. Keep in mind that attribute coming from AIXM4.5 contains mostly of point vector datas. It is ingested by FME where all the magic happens. Like I mentioned earlier, FME does the heavy lifting. It will take the attribute information and transforms it into……. It will also implement our drafting specifications and business rules. Again reducing user’s intervention. Once the FME major processing is complete normally taking about 5 to 10 mins to draft a whole chart. Now with the exported DGN file, the user will performed their manual review and adjustments. Then Print to PDF… Picture: This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice. See Commons:Hirtle chart for further explanation. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Einstein-formal_portrait-35.jpg Essentially the new improved workflow consist of:
- Rob’s Lesson Learned: With all of these automation processes, we will never get away with user intervention. There will always be a need of us to do some of the thinking. To do some of the manual adjustment, that the application simply can’t do. The business rules applied are more consistent, faster and efficient. Automation reduces the risk of human errors. (it can be spelling mistake, wrong symbologies, line types) since the data base drives the final output. Errors only occurs if the information inputed into the database is incorrect. Phil’s Lesson Learned: DOCUMENTATION is Important!! Past workspaces were developed and run only once Run on a regular basis by users not familiar with FME Entire process required documentation, not only for user not familiar with FME but for other FME technical users in order to maintain and troubleshoot any issues User Friendly process and interface Structure workspace to facilitate understanding, we broke the 10 transformer rule, therefore workspace structure was crucial All the workspaces are run on local copies of FME, a non technical, user friendly prompt was required Alex, would you like to add anything from your end?? Alex’s Lesson Learned: Culture vs automation, stats/metrics to add PROS Minimize manual intervention Automation reduce human error Higher Quality Fast and Efficient User Friendly Interface CONS. Complexity of the workbench Workbench Maintenance Volume of change Temporality Culture vs automation