Visual Analysis of Air Traffic Data Using Aircraft Density and Conflict Probability

This paper presents visual analysis tools intended to aid researchers and policy makers by producing a visual representation of air traffic density and, by taking into account the required aircraft separation minima, the conflict probability. The tools support visualization of time-varying air traffic density over an area of interest using different time granularity. This visual analysis platform is used to investigate how potential changes to the aircraft separation policy can reduce congestion while maintaining key safety requirements. The same platform can also be used as a decision aid when assessing potential flight plans for unmanned aerial vehicles.