Ontology Generation for Flight Safety Messages in Air Traffic Management(ATM)
Abstract The analysis of various data is a challenging issue in the field of air traffic flow management (ATFM). Managing a large volume of data and their correct interpretation plays a key role in the prevention of air accidents, human errors, and flight interactions. In general, pilots and flight navigators deal with massive information, including flight safety messages, meteorological messages, aviation NOTAMs, aviation company information messages, and airplane system alerts. Air collisions are possible due to the high volume and variety of such information considering the human errors in their interpretation and application. Therefore, attempts should be made to develop systematic information and establish logical communication between large data volumes in order to increase the reliability factor in flights. Recently, the semantic web has been recognized as a novel foundation of knowledge management that relies on ontology (concept modeling language) and effective techniques for the modeling of integrated information systems and eliminating barriers to the interpretation and exchange of data. The present study aimed to propose an efficient infrastructure for ATMs by defining the concepts, rules, and relationships between the concepts related to the scope of flight information. To this end, we designed and implemented the ontology of flight safety messages, which included an important part of flight operation information. In this research, the IPS-based aviation networks and methontology methodology were exploited for the engineering of the ontology of flight messages. In addition, the implementation process was carried out using the Protégé software. The analysis of the system was performed using the actual data of Mashhad Airport, Iran. The obtained data were based on the inbound and outbound flights of the airport, which were collected using the radar system and FDS and normalized. Finally, the implementation of the ontology of flight messages was demonstrated after a case study of several flight examples. The developed ontology could be incorporated into the foundation of an ATN aviation network as an application.