A HIGHLY INTEGRATED GRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT FOR FLIGHT DATA ANALYSIS

In this work we present a Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) approach based on virtual reconstruction and high level of integration of digital data. The system is designed for easy 4D (space and time) navigation of a flight-path in a 3D environment faithfully representing the scenery where the flight has taken place. The software core is able to read and filter digital data from the flight data recorder installed onboard modern aircrafts and to visualize the resulting flight in the virtual environment. The system interface consists in a set of tools aiming to enhance the understanding of the flight evolution and to increase the perception of critical events, while simplifying the overall analysis task. By using the provided tools users can customize the 3D environment by enriching it with event markers represented by text, images or 2D sketches, movies or animations and other auxiliary information, such as waypoints and navigation-aids. The high level of integration of this system is based on the abstraction and fusion of a big amount of data available in a wide range of different formats. The system is therefore configured like a folder where heterogeneous data are arranged according to the space-time event deployment. The main purpose is to make the cognitive process easier and faster during the flight data analysis. This is especially important in incidents and accidents reconstruction, in particular for what concerns the identification of human factors involved in an accident or any other abnormal event occurred during flight. The system is thus suitable for being used in both pilots training (virtual debriefing) and accidents reconstruction.