NASA SponsoredISARM
Integrated Surface and Approach Risk Monitor
Air-ground interaction analysis, runway incursion alerting, and hazard detection integrating approach and surface data. Includes ATC voice NLP that decodes taxi clearances and detects clearance deviations.
Many runway safety events begin in the air and end on the ground — an arrival lining up with an occupied runway, a crossing timed against an aircraft on final. And a taxi deviation starts with a clearance: the controller says one route, the aircraft takes another. Surveillance shows where aircraft went, but not where they were told to go, and the systems that watch the approach and the surface rarely see each other.
ISARM joins them. It fuses approach and surface data into one picture of the air-ground interaction, decodes controller-pilot voice into structured taxi clearances, and detects incursion risk, hazards, and clearance deviations as they develop. ISARM is being developed with NASA sponsorship.
Capabilities
Approach, surface, and clearance — monitored together
Air-ground interaction analysis
Arrivals, departures, and surface movements are evaluated against each other, not in separate systems.
Runway incursion alerting
Conflicts between runway occupancy and aircraft on approach or takeoff are detected and alerted as they develop.
ATC voice NLP
Speech recognition and aviation-language parsing turn controller-pilot audio into structured clearances — taxi route, hold-short points, runway.
Clearance deviation detection
Each decoded clearance becomes an expected route on the airport layout; a surface track that departs from it is flagged with the clearance that was issued.
Hazard detection
Unstable geometry, late crossings, and wrong-surface alignment are flagged from the fused tracks.
Hotspot and anomaly forecasting
Locations with recurring conflict or deviation are ranked, pointing to confusing geometry, phraseology, or procedures before they cause an event.
Architecture
How it works
1 · Ingest
Terminal-area approach tracks, airport surface surveillance, and ATC voice audio stream into Helios and are time-aligned by aircraft.
2 · Model
Runway occupancy, approach state, and NLP-decoded clearances are combined to evaluate conflict risk and route conformance in real time.
3 · Deliver
Alerts, a live air-ground display, and a record of clearance, route, and track for every flagged event.
Technical profile
At a glance
- Data inputs
- Terminal approach surveillance, surface surveillance, ATC voice communications, airport layout
- Core methods
- Air-ground track fusion, runway occupancy modelling, speech-to-text and aviation-language parsing, clearance-to-route mapping, conflict prediction
- Outputs
- Incursion, hazard, and deviation alerts; decoded clearances; hotspot analysis; event histories
- 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
How does ISARM relate to ASDT?
ASDT models the airport surface; ISARM extends the view into the approach and into the clearance, so an air-ground conflict or a taxi deviation is seen as one event. They share the Helios data platform.
Does ISARM replace the controller’s judgement?
No. ISARM is an analysis and alerting tool; it shows where a clearance, a movement, and the traffic disagree so people can act on it or study it.
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 ISARM in action
We will walk through it on data from your airport or airspace and discuss how it fits your operation.