Top SWIM solutions scoop 2013 Master Class Awards

Innovative entries from Barco and NATS/Snowflake have won the top prizes in the 2013 SESAR SWIM Master Class Awards. The winners, which were announced during a Best-in-Class ceremony at EUROCONTROL headquarters in Brussels, were among 39 SWIM-enabled ATM information solutions that were submitted to the Master Class jury for nomination in one of two categories: services and applications. The ceremony also showcased live some 20 services and applications, illustrating that SWIM is quickly becoming a reality within the global ATM system.

The ceremony brought to a close the second edition of the SESAR SWIM Master Class, which took place between June and November 2013 and welcomed 64 international teams actively developing and demonstrating their SWIM-enabled applications. Held annually, the Master Class is a chance for ATM stakeholders to share their experiences and best practices in implementing the concept of SWIM. In doing so the Master Class has become an important platform through which to build a critical mass of knowledge and excellence about SWIM and to translate the concept into viable solutions.

In the Services category, the Best-in-Class award went to the London Heathrow Arrival Sequence Service, submitted jointly by NATS and Snowflake. The service supports a key concept in SESAR, which is to slow down aircraft en-route in order to absorb some delay before reaching the holding points. This service is implemented using Snowflake Software technology and NATS operational supervision.

“The project would not have been possible without the SESAR drive for open standards and enabled by the A6 community locally. The exploitation path across Europe for this work is enabled by SESAR, and the Master Class provides the initiative for industry to collaborate on fast time implementation using open standards to deliver SWIM and make real the concepts required by ATM,” said Kevin Loy who accepted the award jointly with Alexis Brooker on behalf of NATS and Snowflake respectively.

“The SESAR SWIM Master Class is an excellent way for a small business to gain visibility, enabling great ideas to make it into operational systems,” said Alexis Brooker of Snowflake.

The Best-in-Class award in the Applications category went to the Controller Working Position (CWP) Human Machine Interface (HMI), submitted by Barco. The application in fact displays real-time arrival sequences calculated by the Arrival Manager (AMAN) for London Heathrow, which the Barco application receives from the winning NATS/Snowflake web services. The application is based on an open HMI “plug-in” platform, designed for the needs of ATM and SWIM.

“We are delighted to be recognised by the SESAR SWIM Master Class and the ATM community for our work. SWIM is making more and more information available through its services, so it is important that we have applications that are SWIM enabled. Thanks to SWIM, the market is moving towards open standards, an important change and message which the SESAR SWIM Master Class is relaying to the decision makers and business community alike,“ said Michael Eisele, who accepted the award on behalf of Barco.

The ceremony also recognised the work of the remaining finalists in the two categories, namely: Harris and Selex ES in the Services category and Luciad, Cassidian France, and Selex ES in the Applications category.

“My congratulations go to Barco and NATS/Snowflake, and the remaining finalists for the development of what are very promising innovations for the global ATM community. Their achievement is all the greater considering the many international teams and high quality projects who participated in this year’s edition of the SESAR SWIM Master Class. It is very encouraging to see the significant progress that the SWIM community has made in just two years, thanks to the SESAR SWIM Master Class,” said Claude Chêne, Executive Director of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.

“The quality of this year’s entries has been outstanding and clearly shows that the SESAR SWIM Master Class is a powerful vehicle for innovation. It is very gratifying to see the SWIM community so enthused by this initiative,” said Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL.

SWIM represents a complete paradigm change in how information is managed along its full lifecycle and across the whole European ATM system. Building on the best practices from different information communities, the aim of SWIM is to provide information users with relevant and commonly understandable information. This means making the right air traffic management information available at the right time to aircraft, airports, air traffic controllers, and air navigation service providers, airline operation centres, military operation centres, ground vehicles, flow management centres, and weather service providers. The implementation of the SWIM concept will enable direct ATM business benefits to be generated by assuring the provision of commonly understood quality information. SWIM will result in a more cost and time efficient exchange of information between providers and users.