NASA SponsoredDigital Twin
Airport Safety Digital Twin
Real-time situational awareness with layered safety metric analysis and prediction for airport surface operations.
Airport surface safety is usually reviewed after the fact — an incident report, a hotspot study, a quarterly metric. The Airport Safety Digital Twin models the surface as it operates, so safety margins are measured continuously instead of reconstructed later.
ASDT is a process-based digital twin: it rebuilds every movement on the airport surface from FAA SWIM surveillance and flight data, evaluates layered safety metrics against each operation, and predicts where margins are tightening. Operations staff, safety managers, and executives each get a view tailored to the decisions they make. The technology was developed with NASA sponsorship.
Capabilities
A live model of the airport surface
Process-based twin
Movements are modelled as operational processes — pushback, taxi, runway crossing, departure — not just position dots, so each step can be measured.
Layered safety metrics
Separation, closure rate, and conflict geometry are evaluated per operation and rolled up by runway, taxiway, and time of day.
Hotspot detection
Recurring conflict locations surface from the data itself, ranked by frequency and severity.
Prediction
Short-horizon prediction flags where safety margins are trending down before an event occurs.
Role-tailored views
Operations, safety, and executive views share one model but show the level of detail each role needs.
Historic replay
Any period can be replayed through the same metrics for investigation, training, and trend review.
Architecture
How it works
1 · Ingest
Surface surveillance (STDDS / ASDE-X) and flight data (SFDPS) stream from FAA SWIM into Helios and are fused into one track per aircraft and vehicle.
2 · Model
The twin maps each track onto the airport layout, reconstructs its operational process, and computes safety metrics and predictions.
3 · Deliver
Dashboards, alerts, and APIs expose the live picture and the metric history to each role.
Technical profile
At a glance
- Data inputs
- FAA SWIM STDDS (surface surveillance), SFDPS (flight data), airport layout geometry
- Core methods
- Process-based digital twin, multi-layer safety metrics, short-horizon prediction
- Outputs
- Live surface picture, safety metrics, hotspot maps, alerts, historic replay
- Delivery
- Web application and Helios APIs
- Platform
- Helios — Cignus’s AWS-native aviation data and AI platform
- Access
- Role-based, enforced per request at the Helios API layer — not inside the application
FAQ
Common questions
What does ASDT need from an airport?
Nothing installed on the field. ASDT runs on FAA SWIM data that already covers the airport; we add the airport layout and agree on the metrics that matter to your safety management system.
Is it only for incidents?
No. The same metrics that flag an event also quantify normal operations, which is what makes trends and hotspots visible.
How is access controlled?
By role, at the API layer. Every request to Helios passes through interceptors that check the caller’s role and scope before any data is returned, so the same rules apply whether the request comes from the application, an API client, or an integration. Nothing is governed inside the application itself.
See Digital Twin in action
We will walk through it on data from your airport or airspace and discuss how it fits your operation.