|
DVT Air
Traffic Control Tower Height
Analysis: 1Mr. Steve
Murrill, 1Dr. Ron
Driggers, 2Dr. William
Krebs, and 3Dr. Michael
Crognale (1Army Research
Laboratory, Adelphi Maryland; 2AAR-100,
and 3University of
Nevada, Reno) assisted the Federal
Aviation Administration Western
Pacific Region’s Requirements Branch
(AWP-510) in quanitifying what
improvement can be gained by
increasing the Deer Valley air
traffic control tower (DVT map can
be found at
http://www.hf.faa.gov/docs/508/docs/DVTmap.pdf)
height from 110’ to 130’ or 150’?
Specific analyses included: (1) what
improvement in visibility
(detection, recognition,
identification) can be gained by
increasing the DVT tower height from
110’ to 130’ or 150’, and (2) what
improvement in discriminating two
spatially disparate points can be
gained by increasing the DVT tower
height from 110’ to 130’ or 150’?
Mr. Murrill and Dr. Driggers
conducted a quantitative analysis
using the U.S. Army Night Vision
Laboratory’s model, Kopeika’s
turbulence model, and Tatarski
height scaling model to calculate an
air traffic controller’s detection,
recognition, and identification of a
Cessna 172, Lear 60, and Convair 580
while positioned 110’, 130’ or 150’
above ground on a hot sunny day in a
dry arid climate. Results showed
that a change in tower height from
110’ to 150’ had a minimal increase
in performance on observers’ visual
detection of a Cessna 172 (~6.9%),
Lear 60 (~7.9%), and ConVair 580
(~8.8%). At 4500’ (~1.4km), the
probabilities of identification for
the Cessna 172 are all just below
the 90% level; the maximum change in
visibility is less than 2% among the
three tower heights analyzed.
Army's Powerpoint presentation |
