Friday October 28th marked the official start by Air Traffic Control the Netherlands (LVNL) of the use of RIASS, the Runway Incursion Alerting System for Schiphol. This innovative system has been developed by the Air Traffic Control Authorities together with the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR. It is an important new extra safety net to prevent runway incursions at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
RIASS provides warnings to tower air traffic controllers about potentially dangerous situations when other than planned aircraft inadvertently proceed towards entering an active runway. These situations are called runway incursions.
RIASS is an extra addition to already exciting technical means and procedures to prevent unsafe situations at runway crossings. It sounds an alarm when there is a potential dangerous situation between landing, departing or crossing aircraft, or between aircraft and vehicles. To this end, runways and access ways have been partitioned into virtual blocks or boxes.
NLR previously developed the RIASS prototype and thoroughly tested it in NARSIM Tower, NLR’s Tower Air Traffic Control research development, test and evaluation facility. Once installed at Schiphol Airport, the system was further tailored and validated. A first implementation was installed for one of the major runways, the Kaagbaan.
The system was then phased in at all other runways at Schiphol airport. LVNL and NLR have delivered a unique product that enhances safety at Schiphol Airport even further.
