Terrain and Obstacles

Overview

Meet the November 20, 2008 international civil aviation organization deadline for making terrain and obstacle data available electronically with our customized databases.

From data capture to quality control, our services comply with worldwide agreements and include database validation and maintenance.

Types of Data

Improve Warning Systems.  Use data to enhance these ground proximity warning and situational awareness systems:

• Terrain Awareness and Warning Systems (TAWS)
• Flight simulators
• Aircraft operating limitation analysis software.
• Instrument procedure design and evaluation of obstacle restrictions on or near aerodromes and heliports. 

Terrain Data.  Our terrain data meet or exceed the following requirements:

• U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)  Technical Standard Order C151A, Terrain Awareness and Warning Systems for underlying terrain layer resolution.
• Area 1 under International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 15 (appendix 8, table A8-1) for underlying terrain layer resolution.
• Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) Document DO-200A, Standards for Processing of Aeronautical Data.

Obstacle Data.  

• Development of the world's most advanced database of obstacles relevant to aviation.
• Production processes comply with RTCA Document DO-200A
• Obstacle identification as required by the U.S. Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) Part 77 and ICAO Annex 14.

Increased ATC Height.  Our airspace analysis, evaluation and assessment provide:

• The support you need to increase Air Traffic Control Tower heights.
• Information needed for protecting restrictive local building outside airport controlled property.
• Recommended planning or actions required to maintain ICAO or FAA airspace compliance with our collision risk modeling (CRM) and safety management assessments (SMA).
• An understanding of the impact to airspace and possible mitigation concepts.

Data License Arrangement.  Our data license offers:

• A process for maintaining a database system of terrain and obstacle files for your selected geographic area.
• Data conversion into the format required by your target system.
• Data distribution to your end user. 

Obstacle Attributes

Obstacles in our databases include these attributes:

• Obstacle type
• Elevation mean sea level(MSL)
• Height above ground level (AGL)
• Lighting (if known)
• Geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude)
• Coordinate datum (if known)
• Number of structures per obstacle (if known)
• Vertical and horizontal accuracy (if known)