Binghamton University students create system to manage runway obstructions

VESTAL, N.Y. — A team of Binghamton University students tied for first place in one of the categories in a design competition that focused on addressing the needs of airports.

The group participated in the airport-cooperative research program (ACRP) university-design competition for addressing airport needs, Binghamton University said in a news release issued Monday.

The Binghamton students shared first place with Roger Williams University of Bristol, Rhode Island in the category “airport operations and maintenance challenge.”

They submitted a design for an “automated system for managing vegetative obstructions,” according to the release.

Volunteer panels of airport industry and academic practitioners and representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration selected the winning proposals.

Students from winning teams “equally” divide cash prizes, the school said.

The Binghamton team will accept its award and present its work at the National Academies Keck Center in Washington, D.C. on Friday morning.

In addition, team members will present their design as the keynote luncheon speakers at the Airport Consultants Council (ACC) airports technical workshop in Washington, D.C. that same day.

 

Addressing a problem

The school’s news release describes obstructions to air navigation as “one of the biggest challenges in the aviation world.”

Towers and buildings are “well-documented obstructions,” but trees and other types of vegetation are not, the university said.

Airports currently take surveys and cut back vegetation to address the issue. However, vegetation grows back, “often very quickly,” so the cutting effort “doesn’t solve the issue.”

Without a system for monitoring the growth, it “often” surprises the airport and creates “safety concerns” for pilots, Binghamton said.

Students in the Binghamton University scholars program examined the issue to determine how airports could “better” predict when they would have a problem with this type of vegetation.

The team created an automated system for managing vegetative obstruction, using predictive modeling to estimate tree growth over a period of time.

“There are ways that the industry currently addresses obstruction analysis, but it has become antiquated and doesn’t have the kind of predictive value that this system would have,” Chad Nixon, an adjunct professor, said in the Binghamton University news release.

Nixon also serves as senior vice president and aviation project manager at McFarland Johnson Inc., a South Burlington, Vermont–based consultancy providing financial and aviation planning.

Students from across three Binghamton University schools — Harpur College, School of Management, and Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science — collaborated on this year’s project, the school said.

 

About ACRP

The airport cooperative research program is part of the transportation-research board of the Washington, D.C.–based National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The Hampton, Virginia–based Virginia Space Grant Consortium manages the ACRP’s university-design competition.

Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) is a coalition of five Virginia colleges and universities, NASA, state educational agencies, Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology, and other institutions representing diverse aerospace interests.

 

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com