ESTEC, 29th May 2008

Close to 70 participants from Dutch, Belgium, French and German military aviation and from Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese civil aviation representatives, including airlines, pilot associations and Airport Authorities attended The FlySafe final presentation on 29 May at ESA's ESTEC facility in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

The main objective of FlySafe is to prove the viability of an integrated space and non space system capable of reducing bird strike risks for air forces. FlySafe activities were initiated in partnership with Dutch, Belgium, French and German Air Forces and in cooperation with European industry and research institutes during the Preparatory Phase of the ARTES 20 Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) in 2007.

The final presentation opened with a short introduction by ESA on the awareness activities that originated the ESA FlySafe initiative, followed by presentations by Dutch and Belgian Air Forces - FlySafe user representatives - illustrating the status of their operations before and after the FlySafe initiative, including the requirements for the FlySafe initiative.

The FlySafe industrial consortium represented by KNMI, SARA and the University of Amsterdam presented the newly-developed FlySafe system. It combines space (namely earth observation, positioning and telecommunication satellites) and existing terrestrial assets through a system of system approach to deliver information on bird migration at various spatial and time resolutions. Two main demonstration services are currently provided by the system:

• Hourly updated visualisation of bird migration densities covering geographic areas of Belgium and the Netherlands
• Hourly updated three-day forecasts for Belgium and the Netherlands (see http://public.flysafe.sara.nl/bambas/)

Live demonstrations of these two services were shown during the event.

The Netherlands and Belgium Air Forces acknowledged the achievements of the FlySafe initiative stressing that, based on these results, pre-operational services will follow.

A representative from the Finnish Meteorological Institute also encouraged ESA to pursue further expansion of the current FlySafe coverage area and declared his support and commitment for this purpose.

Positive feedback was also gathered from representatives of the Lisbon, Schiphol, Maastricht Aachen, Oostende, Brussels, Liège and Charleroi Airports, as well as from the Dutch Airline Pilots Association, Dutch civil aviation authorities and KLM. They all expressed their appreciation of FlySafe’s impressive results as well as their interest and support in follow-on ESA initiatives on bird strike risk reduction for civil aviation.

“The strong interest and positive feedbacks received from Military and Civil Aviation Authorities during the discussion session are an encouragement for continuing ESA IAP initiative in support of Air Forces for the consolidation phase of the bird strike risk reduction services and to open a new front to meet the demand of civil aviation authorities” says Amnon Ginati, Head of ESA’s Integrated Applications Programme.

ESA acknowledges all FlySafe Partners and Team including the Belgian Air Force, French Air Force, German Air and Royal Netherlands Air Force and UvA(NL), KNMI (NL), SARA (NL), TNO (NL), SOVON (NL), IFV(D), IDA (D), RMI (B), SOI (CH), Meteo France (F), Thales RES (F), TAS (F). ESA extends special thanks to the ESA Belgian and Dutch Delegates, M. Wagner and B. Meijvogel.

Presentations given at the FlySafe final presentation are now available for download by clicking here or on the presentations link located in the top right column of this page. Links to relevant FlySafe resources are also listed under the related links section.

12 May 2009

The final presentation of FlySafe will take place on 29 May in the Newton 2 meeting room at ESA's ESTEC facility in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. All interested parties are invited to attend.

FlySafe aims at establishing a bird-warning system to improve flight safety in northwest Europe for military Air Force operations. FlySafe will deliver a proof-of-concept information system to generate quasi real-time information and forecast of bird migration at various spatial and temporal scales by combining various space and terrestrial assets.

Bird strikes on aircraft pose a real safety threat for both military and civil aviation. Depending on specific circumstances such as the speed of the aircraft, the point of impact, the mass of the bird, the number of birds and the type of aircraft, bird strikes can result in devastating accidents. The annual cost of bird strikes due to damage and delays for the civilian aviation is estimated to be between 1 and 2 billion Euro.

Several issues are being addressed in FlySafe. They include:

• Federation and coordination of the users and their requirements
• Standardisation
• Interoperability
• Increase efficiency of operational systems
• Development of forecast models

Space technologies play an important role for the characterization of global movements of birds by indirectly providing a number of environmental parameters such as; initiation of migration, stopover behaviour, shortage of foods and other parameters used to model and predict bird migration.

ARTES 20 IAP –  the Integrated Applications Promotion programme – initiated FlySafe in June 2007 in partnership with Dutch, Belgium, French and German Air Forces and in cooperation with industry and research institutes from several European countries. It is one of the first activities launched during the preparatory phase of the IAP programme.

All those interested in attending the final presentation of FlySafe are asked to send an email to iap@esa.int. Please enter  “FlySafe Final Presentation” as the subject header or title of your email.

A final presentation agenda and further information can be found in the related links in the top right column of this page. For directions to ESTEC, click here.

This ITT for an IAP Feasibility Study aims at assessing the feasibility, viability and added value of space assets (esp. earth observation data and satellite navigation/positioning tools) for developing predictive risk maps and GIS for mosquito surveillance, control and study in Europe.

You may obtain further information of this ITT on the ESA EMITS website, with the menu "Open Invitations to Tender" under the ITT number AO6088.

A successful conference of ministers in charge of space activities has secured an on-going commitment to the ESA Telecommunications and Integrated Applications Directorate activities, including approval for the start of two new programmes, one of which is the Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) Programme (ARTES element 20, Phase 1).

The two-day conference (25-26 November 2008) resulted in resounding approval and continued support for telecommunications activities.