OpenARIA: Open-source edition of the Aviation Risk Identification and Assessment (ARIA)
MITRE now offers an open-source version of its Aviation Risk Identification and Assessment (ARIA) software suite, OpenARIA. This initiative is dedicated to enhancing aviation safety and efficiency through the active involvement of the aviation community.
ARIA suite
The first prototype of ARIA was developed for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in collaboration with the FAA’s Safety and Technical Training service unit Quality Assurance (QA) group, and it was introduced in October 2020. During 2021 and 2022, MITRE enhanced the ARIA suite by integrating new features, offering more detailed insights into aircraft incidents that occur too close to each other on or near airport surfaces and in proximity to terrain or obstacles.
ARIA automatically analyzes radar and other surveillance data about flights in U.S. airspace in near real time. It uses algorithms that examine speed, altitude, and trajectory to identify situations that may constitute safety issues. It then prioritizes them for deeper investigation, effectively sorts safety encounters, and puts the rare—but extremely important—high-potential risk encounters at the top of the list in near real time.
In addition to prioritizing safety encounters, ARIA provides FAA QA investigators with a more complete safety picture.
OpenARIA
OpenARIA offers a publicly available solution for detecting airborne aviation safety encounters utilizing aircraft location data and aggregates those risks for bulk analysis to collect community feedback to improve the overall system and make valuable improvements to the code.
Its release is intended to help create an international community that works together to detect, understand, and mitigate risks.
“The safety level of today’s flight operations reflects a continual improvement in performance, technologies, and procedures. The goal of all aviation stakeholders is to make this system even safer. OpenARIA is an opportunity for those stakeholders to contribute to doing just that,” notes Greg Tennille, managing director for transportation safety at MITRE’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development. “OpenARIA is one of the tools we’re using to generate safety intelligence to prevent aviation accidents as we move toward automatically detecting events.”
“Despite its potential, OpenARIA faces challenges such as ensuring data privacy and security, managing real-time data processing’s technical complexity, and gaining broad industry and regulatory acceptance. Overcoming these challenges will require a concerted effort from developers, security experts, regulatory bodies, and the aviation community,” security researcher Santiago Holley told Help Net Security.
OpenARIA is available for free to the public on GitHub.
More to consider:
- Fly Catcher: Detect aircraft spoofing by monitoring for malicious signals
- Skytrack: Open-source aircraft reconnaissance tool