the Challenge
Visualizing aviation data, such as major air traffic flows, regional air navigation plans, and other regional data is important to ICAO staff in order for them to ensure safe air travel. ICAO staff did not have an efficient way to see this data, relying on unsophisticated methods to organize their work and visualize data, which meant that information was not updated in a timely fashion. ICAO recognized the need for a better process that would allow data to be updated more frequently and efficiently, ensuring quality control of the data and ultimately safety of lives and property.
the solution
In 2003, the Eleventh Air Navigation Conference (AN-Conf/11) recommended that ICAO develop a database containing all tabular material from ICAO regional air navigation plans together with major traffic flows and other regional data to achieve this goal. The database, along with all associated charts, would be made available through the Web. To meet these objectives, the organization had to make management of updates easier and allow more staff members within the ICAO community to access data. ESRI’s ArcGIS® Server, a server- based geographic information system (GIS) solution with client access via the Web, was chosen to meet ICAO’s needs.