An ontology for future airspace system architectures

Abstract

The National Airspace System (NAS) is a highly complex system-of-systems evolving at an incremental rate. NASA has an interest in ab initio airspace system architectures that leapfrog today's evolutionary constraints enabling airspace operations of the future — 2035 and beyond. A clean-sheet approach to designing a future Airspace System leads to a myriad of possible architectures. Common concepts exist across all future alternatives. For example, each architecture must contain aircraft, aerodromes (both large and small), and airspace. The common concepts are captured in an ontology for a future Airspace System. The Airspace System ontology is composed of a collection of entities, properties and relationships representing the key system concepts. It separates the domain knowledge from the operational, thus enabling the development of architectural variations derived from a common language and understanding of the Airspace System.