Pulsar Consulting

ICARD

Since October 1995, EUROCONTROL and the ICAO EUR/NAT Regional Office have been working together to develop and maintain a common database of facilities and services required for international air navigation.

In February 1998, the first internet application on the EUROCONTROL website was developed to support the allocation process of

five-letter name-codes (5LNC) used for the identification of significant points
route designators (RD) used for the identification of flight routes.

This application was named ICARD.

More Information

See also the ICARD 5LNC application on the ICAO Portal here.

On 22 August 2010, the ICAO EUR/NAT Regional Database (ICARD) has been transferred to ICAO HQ. This means when accessing ICARD through the EUROCONTROL-website, you will be redirected to a new page explaining how to register on the ICAO portal for authorised access to the new server. No major changes have been implemented to the application itself.

Project Objectives

The primary objectives in producing a software application to manage Designators and Codes were:

providing support fot route planning process for ICAO national and international route planning staff
reducing the time involved in allocating codes and designators
improving the data storage medium
increasing people’s confidence in the integrity of the data
correlating data between appropriate sources
maintaining the security of the data

Application Scope

The ICARD application is an interactive internet-based system that makes it possible to:

query the content of the database maintained by staff from the ICAO EUR/NAT office (open to public users)
reserve 5LNC codes or route designators (limited to authorized users)
describe flight routes, helping the user to plot them along significant points (reserved to route planners)

Technologies

The ICARD application was built using Pulsar's Framework entitled GID/GIDPro/GIDPlus. GIDPro chiefly comprises an assembly of several top market open source libraries which combine to form a consistent development and runtime platform.
This framework allows rapid application development (RAD) of Web applications coupled with relational databases within an extendable, modular and reliable architecture. It includes a wizard and a repository for registering easily all page items, actions and navigation links.

Other types of standard technology used to develop this application are:

XML/XLS, HTML, Velocity, CSS, extJS and Javascript for writing the HTML pages
J2EE, JSP, EJB, Struts and Oracle Business Components (BC4J) for coding the logics
Oracle database and Cayenne, Hibernate as ORM layer
Eclipse and Oracle JDeveloper as development environments
Oracle Designer and Sybase PowerDesigner to design and generate the database
PLSQLDevl to manage the Oracle database
Tomcat as web application server, Apache as web listener and HTTPS server
LDAP as User Authentication Repository
SVG rendering

Main Concepts and Terminology

5LNC (5-letter name code)
The 5LNC are drawn from a set of pre-defined five-letter combinations generated by ICAO and the FAA in the 1960's. This list was then divided up and distributed to the various ICAO Regional Offices throughout the world. These reserve lists have since formed the basis for 5LNC allocation by the ICAO Offices objective with a view to establishing and allocating a single code world-wide in order to ensure that it is possible to guarantee the unambiguous designation of significant points not linked to the site of a Radio Navigation Aid (Navaid).

RD (Route Designator)
A route designator is a standardized code name allocated to a flight route. The list of Route Designators is governed by the following principles:

The number of Route Designators should be kept to a minimum whilst allowing the majority of recurring flight operations to identify specific ATS routes in flight plans.
The allocation of these designators should be co-ordinated with the ICAO regional offices.

Plan
The official list of significant points and routes with their attributes and descriptions, including coordinates (latitude, longitude).

Reserve List
Data available to Route Planners and Data Managers but not yet part of the plan.

Amendment
Process of modifying data that were already transferred to the plan.

Allocation
Process of transferring data from the reserve list to the plan.

Region
Division of the airspace.

Request
When a Route Planner wants to add a code or a route to the plan, he must post a request to the Data Manager. The (Available) code becomes Requested. This step is not required for non-regional routes for which the route planner can directly modify the plan.

Available
Any available data not currently used in the plan or requested for the plan.

Basket (Accepted or Refused)
A list of accepted or refused requests, serving as a starting point to build notification messages.

Route Description
Ordered list of Significant Points which help to plot a flight route, and related information.

Regional vs. Non-Regional route designators

Regional RDs are international designators used by regions. Regional ATS Routes are those which are part of the basic ATS route network depicted into the Air Navigation Plan.
Non-Regional Routes are the domestic (national) routes. Supplementary to the basic ATS route network, they are not subject to the formal amendment procedure of the Air Navigation Plan.

Reserved
Non-Regional RD currently in the plan.

Basic Route Designator
The basic designator consists of one letter of the alphabet followed by a number from 1 to 999.

Designated Point vs. Significant Point
A Significant Point is a point in a route; a Designated Point is a specific Significant Point designated by a 5LNC. Significant Points can be either a Designated Point or a Navaid Point or a Temporary Point.

USER ROLES (PROFILES)
We can identify 3 different user roles in the application:

Browser Profile: defines the rights of people browsing the website without any particular role. Basically, all they can do is consult the information about the Allocated, Reserved, Requested or Available routes and points. This profile cannot carry out any updates to the database, and therefore does not require authentification.
Route Planner Profile: is responsible for designing routes. He therefore needs:
- to manage 5LNC for naming significant points
- to manage route designators for naming routes
- to draw routes.
Once authenticated, he can enter a request to amend the plan.
Data Manager Profile: mainly maintains the plan for his region. He has the possibility to Allocate, Amend or Delete any point and any route in the plan. He is also responsible for handling requests from route planners. He can either accept or refuse a request. An accepted request for allocation will be automatically transferred to the plan. He is also in charge of maintaining technical parameters.

Business Flow

Main Functionalities for 5LNC System

First of all, the user must search for available 5LNC codes in the reserve list. By clicking on “Search”, the results which correspond to the criteria will be displayed in the results zone. By clicking on an available 5LNC point in the result list, the Code Allocation or Request for Code Allocation popup (for data managers or route planners respectively) will be displayed. There, the user can enter the latitude and longitude of the point that will be designated by the 5LNC code, together with other relevant information.

By clicking on “Map” an SVG map will appear allowing visualizing the neighborhood of the point to be allocated.

The user can search and view information about already-allocated points.

The user can search and view information about already-allocated points.

The data manager can use the “Take a Decision” screen to either accept or reject the requests for 5LNC code allocation.

Search criteria help the user to find the various requests and the Baskets show the 5LNC code allocations previously accepted/rejected by the data manager.

After that, the data manager can use the “Handle Notification Messages” screen to warn those concerned about his acceptance/rejection of the posted requests.

The data manager can also directly manage the users and synchronize the database with the LDAP authentication register.

Main Functionalities for RD System

The user can search for available Route Designators in the reserve list. By clicking on “Search”, results corresponding to the criteria will be displayed in the result zone.

Colors are used in the result list to distinguish available/released (in green), requested (in orange, only for regional sytem) or allocated (in red) Route Designators.
Clicking on a green RD in the result list displays either the Request for Allocation of an ATS RD or the Reserve Non-Regional RD popup (respectively for regional and non-regional systems).

The data manager can use the “Check Regional RD Requests” screen (see below) to either accept or reject requests for RD allocation.

The screen “Find Routes” shows the routes currently in the plan with both a Route Designator and a Route Description. So it will only display routes which match the red color code.

The search criteria are:

the full Route Designator (e.g. “A27”)
the Region where at least one significant point of the route is located
a list of significant points used to describe the route
a list of countries where at least one significant point of the route is located.

The screen “Find ATS Route Proposals” allows the user to manage the proposals for route descriptions. It uses similar criteria as the previous screen plus some others:

name of the proposal
steward of the proposal
type: new route description (NEW), amendment of a route description already in the plan (AME), or any
status: draft, proposed, accepted, released or withdrawn
the associated full route designator
a list of significant points which appear in the description (the search will consider that all given points should appear in the description)
countries where at least one significant point of the description is located (multiple selection helps the user to find all route descriptions crossing the same set of countries)
region where at least one significant point of the description is located

The following action items are available:
A = allows a data manager to accept and transfer a route description to the plan. D = makes it possible to delete a route description (i.e. mark it as released). RD = makes it possible to effect a raw deletion. C = copies the data and the points of the selected route description into a new one, prefixing its name with the string “copy of” and leads to the Create ATS Route Proposal popup initialized with these new data.

By clicking on a name in the result list, a selection is made and the user is guided to the main popup: ‘Modify ATS Route Proposal’. Clicking on "Show Map" opens a popup with a map illustrating the route.

The Data Manager and Steward can work on route descriptions at any time.

Only a data manager or the route steward can modify it. However, it is possible to give the route to another steward.

Concerning the field “RD in Plan or in Request”, the two cases must be treated differently:

If trying to associate a new description with a new RD, the user simply gives the route designator.
- The system checks that there is only one such RD in the plan or in pending requests which do not have yet a description.
- Otherwise an error message will be displayed, asking the user to contact the administrator.
When coming from a route in the plan, the RD will be set already and it cannot be edited.
- The system checks whether the associated route ever had a description in the plan.
- If not, then we are back to case 1.

The buttons at the bottom of the page will allow:

changes to be submitted

the popup to be closed

the plan to be updated to include the route description

Clicking on a segment activates the “Modify Route Segment” popup. There, you can alter the segment type and the note selection, but also the flight level (min and max), the direction (forward, backward or both) and the airspace level (upper, lower, both).

Clicking on a Point Box activates the Detail of Route Point popup.

Deleting a Point creates a direct segment between the surrounding points. The newly created segment will take all the notes of the replaced segments.

The point type specifies whether the point is:

an allocated designated point
a requested 5LNC in request
a navaid
or a temporary point

When inserting a Point, two segments will be created from one. The existing notes, should any exist , will be added to both segments. The segments will be considered as continuous by default.

When adding or replacing a point, the Choose Point popup replaces the Detail of Route Point popup. The list of available significant points will be restricted to 5LNC or navaids with coordinates. Then, the user can either select an existing point or create a new one.

To create a temporary point, a new code must be specified together with a country, latitude and longitude. Following submission of this information, the point is saved and inserted into the route description.

All temporary points must be replaced either by a 5LNC or by a navaid before the route description can be transferred to the plan.

Main functionalities of the Navaid System

Data Managers and route planners can manage the list of Navaids and Location Names. However, route planners can only manage navaids from their own country.