Airspace of Interest Generation for Pilot Report Smart Solicitation

Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Public Release Case Number 23-2831

Abstract: Airspace of Interest Generation for Pilot Report Smart Solicitation

A pilot report (PIREP) is a report provided by pilots on atmospheric conditions encountered in flight. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires air traffic controllers (ATCs) to solicit PIREPs when certain weather conditions are observed or forecast. PIREPs can contain important information about potentially risky atmospheric conditions that pilots may encounter in flight. The FAA would like to increase the number of acquired PIREPs, which puts an increased burden on air traffic controllers to solicit them. PIREP solicitation is currently a manual process that heavily depends on whether air traffic controllers have time outside of their primary duties to request PIREPs. This research explores technical approaches for automating PIREP solicitation through processing 2D and 3D weather data and applying density-based clustering methods using Python. We explore various geospatial processing and aggregation methods to generate and simplify PIREP Airspace of Interest (PAI) polygons; these polygons indicate when and where weather conditions meeting the FAA’s PIREP solicitation criteria will occur and serve as a resource to advise Flight Service Specialists or air traffic controllers to solicit PIREPs more efficiently. Future work will apply the generation of the PAIs to a PIREP Smart Solicitation proof-of-concept project in the Alaska region to refine and validate this approach and ensure that the algorithms are generalizable across a variety of conditions.

NOTICE

This work was produced for the U.S. Government under Contract 693KA8-22-C-00001 and is subject to Federal Aviation Administration Acquisition Management System Clause 3.5-13, Rights In Data-General, Alt. III and Alt. IV (Oct. 1996).

The contents of this document reflect the views of the author and The MITRE Corporation and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or the Department of Transportation (DOT). Neither the FAA nor the DOT makes any warranty or guarantee, expressed or implied, concerning the content or accuracy of these views.

For further information, please contact The MITRE Corporation, Contracts Management Office,

7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA 22102-7539, (703) 983-6000.

© 2023 The MITRE Corporation. All Rights Reserved.