Case Study: Vertical Obstruction Review and Analysis

Vertical Obstruction (VO) information is used for safety of navigation for low-flying aircraft. VO data comes from a variety of sources, including spot reports, databases and, more recently, automated algorithms. All of these sources have errors that can result in contamination of VO databases used by pilots.  Observera developed a concept for an Analyst-In-The-Loop (AITL) workflow, and then prototyped and tested the concept with working VO and imagery analysts. Results showed that reported VOs can be reviewed by an analyst and, in an average of 17 seconds, determine if the VO is real and, if so, be classified by type. The resulting errors in data were reduced by 97 percent.