NAV CANADA Digital Facilities

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How does it work?

The concept of digital facilities takes the provision of air traffic services (ATS) at an airport (e.g. aerodrome advisory and airport control service) to new heights by leveraging advanced technology that avoids the limitations of traditional on-site personnel visual capabilities. This is how it works:

Instead of having ATS personnel look out a window, digital facilities use high resolution camera technology to capture what is happening on the field and display an augmented video feed on an integrated set of screens.
These screens — along with the other communication and surveillance technology you'd expect at a control tower or flight service station (FSS) — are located in a local or remote facility, from which ATS personnel provide service.
In the future, this can provide the opportunity for a hub approach, wherein multiple airports are provided service from a single centralized facility.

What are the benefits?

The use of digital facilities opens the door to multiple safety and efficiency benefits and new ways of delivering service:

Augmentation to human visual capabilities including on-screen aircraft and vehicle tagging, contributing to safety and possible service enhancements such as ensuring compliance with taxi instructions, runway occupancy checks, confirmation of current weather conditions, and — as the technology evolves — short-term conflict detection
Enhanced vision in low visibility conditions
Elimination of blind spots due to physical structures obstructing a controller or flight service specialist's view
Increased staffing flexibility and training commonality
Greater resilience through improved disaster recovery and operational agility
More efficient operations and access to locations that are remote and where staffed facilities could be costly to maintain

Other ANSPs around the world are already starting to reap the benefits that digital facilities can deliver. In April 2021, London City became the first major airport to be controlled by a remote digital towerOpen a new window. Here in Canada, we are learning from the experiences of other countries' ANSPs and considering their findings when developing our long-term strategy alongside our employees.

While the implementation of digital facilities is a complex undertaking that won't be completed quickly, work to lay the foundation is well underway. In 2023, NAV CANADA selected Kingston, Ontario as the first site for a digital facility under our multi-year Digital Aerodrome Air Traffic Services (DAATS) program. This digital facility serving the local Kingston Airport, well as a test facility in Ottawa, will be used to refine and evaluate technology and operating procedures. This work will be foundational to inform future implementations of digital facilities to support other airports across the country. In 2024, we took another step forward, signing an agreement with Kongsberg Geospatial to enable this project with their state-of-the-art DAATS technology.