Mitigating runway incursions : a safety benefits assessment of airport surface moving map displays

Chase, Stephanie; Eon, Danielle; Yeh, Michelle · 2010 · ROSA P / John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (U.S.)

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Summary

This paper presents a safety benefits assessment of airport surface moving map displays (SMMs) aimed at mitigating runway incursions and surface incidents. Motivated by the need to quantify how specific display capabilities enhance pilot position awareness, the study analyzes historical data to determine which features most effectively prevent errors. While previous research established that SMMs improve situational awareness, there was a lack of empirical analysis using documented incident data to assess the potential mitigation rates of different capability levels. The researchers analyzed runway incursion and surface incident data from the Federal Aviation Administration for fiscal years 2007 and 2008. They categorized incidents by fault type: Pilot Deviations (PD), Operational Errors (OE), and Vehicle/Pedestrian Deviations (V/PD). The study evaluated six levels of SMM capabilities, ranging from a basic surface map to advanced displays featuring ownship position, traffic depiction (aircraft and vehicles), taxi route guidance, and runway incursion annunciations. By mapping incident scenarios and error types to these capability levels, the authors estimated the percentage of incidents that could have been mitigated if pilots or vehicle drivers had access to specific display features. The results indicated that an SMM displaying only ownship position (Level 2) could mitigate approximately 30% of all runway incidents, primarily addressing pilot deviations. Adding the depiction of other aircraft traffic increased mitigation potential to 50%, while including all surface traffic (aircraft and vehicles) raised the total benefit to 59%. Notably, the addition of runway incursion annunciations or taxi route guidance did not significantly increase mitigation rates beyond the benefits provided by ownship and traffic displays. Analysis by severity showed that 100% of Category A (most serious) incursions could potentially be prevented with a display showing ownship and all surface traffic. Furthermore, General Aviation (GA) aircraft at fault saw higher mitigation rates than Air Transport (AT) aircraft. Vehicle drivers equipped with advanced SMMs could mitigate 41% to 55% of vehicle-related deviations, though overall benefits for vehicles were lower than for aircraft. The study concludes that ownship position and traffic depiction are the most critical capabilities for reducing runway incursions, particularly by allowing pilots to detect and avoid errors made by controllers or other operators. The lack of additional benefit from annunciations and route guidance suggests these features may be redundant if pilots are actively monitoring traffic and ownship position. These findings provide evidence-based guidance for the design and implementation of airport surface moving map technologies, emphasizing the priority of real-time position and traffic awareness over alerting or routing aids.

Key finding

A surface moving map displaying ownship position and all surface traffic had the potential to mitigate approximately 59% of runway incursions and surface incidents in FY2007 and FY2008.

Methodology

dataset

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

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