Reduction of Collisions between Aircraft and Surface Vehicles

Automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) will be the basis of future surveillance systems in the United States as well as in many other countries. The more frequent and more accurate information available with ADS-B could improve the performance of conflict-alerting systems for vehicles operating on airport surfaces. Ten years of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) airport surface accident reports were reviewed, and four encounter scenarios representing the most commonly observed interactions between aircraft and airport surface vehicles were created. A concept of operation was then defined for how an ADS-B–based alerting system could take advantage of ADS-B–specific information to generate alerts in each of those four encounter scenarios. Through the use of historical ADS-B data from the Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Louisville, Kentucky, airports, proof of concept was established. The concepts show promise in reducing the uncertainty in alerting systems that is present because of lack of knowledge of the intent of the operator. Instead of guessing at future states by propagating trajectories, an alerting system would compare expected behavior to actual behavior and alert personnel if a deviation were observed.