<p>The main purpose of a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) is to facilitate the investigation of incidents. In order to interpret the data that has been recorded in the FDR the data has to be visualized in some way. This can be done with software on a computer or with hardware that is specific for the model of aircraft that the data originates from.</p><p>The aim of this project is to visualize data for six parameters from the FDR of Saab 2000 in an avionics rig. The avionics rig resembles the cockpit of Saab 2000 and the displays in it are identical to the ones found in the plane. All six parameters are shown on the same display.</p><p>Due to safety regulation vital systems in aircraft are doubled, with one system on the left side and one on the right. Because of the architecture of the rig it was decided that data from the right-hand side systems were to be visualized on the right-hand side display. It is not possible to guarantee that no incorrect values are shown for the parameter altitude when values are taken from the right-hand side, but it can be done for values from the left side. This is the reason why values are taken from the left-hand side for altitude. In the rig a computer with an ARINC429-card and the software Data Bus Analyzer was accessible to transmit data to the displays. DBA can save received data in ASCII-files and also open and transmit the data in such files. Data that has been extracted from an FDR can be converted to the format which DBA can read with macros that have been written in the project. After conversion the data can be transmitted to the display on which it is supposed to be visualized.</p>

The main purpose of a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) is to facilitate the investigation of incidents. In order to interpret the data that has been recorded in the FDR the data has to be visualized in some way. This can be done with software on a computer or with hardware that is specific for the model of aircraft that the data originates from. The aim of this project is to visualize data for six parameters from the FDR of Saab 2000 in an avionics rig. The avionics rig resembles the cockpit of Saab 2000 and the displays in it are identical to the ones found in the plane. All six parameters are shown on the same display. Due to safety regulation vital systems in aircraft are doubled, with one system on the left side and one on the right. Because of the architecture of the rig it was decided that data from the right-hand side systems were to be visualized on the right-hand side display. It is not possible to guarantee that no incorrect values are shown for the parameter altitude when values are taken from the right-hand side, but it can be done for values from the left side. This is the reason why values are taken from the left-hand side for altitude. In the rig a computer with an ARINC429-card and the software Data Bus Analyzer was accessible to transmit data to the displays. DBA can save received data in ASCII-files and also open and transmit the data in such files. Data that has been extracted from an FDR can be converted to the format which DBA can read with macros that have been written in the project. After conversion the data can be transmitted to the display on which it is supposed to be visualized.

This diploma thesis deals with analysis of existing solutions for collecting maintenance data and technical condition of the aircraft. Based on this analysis, it proposes a trend monitoring system based on the existing structure and data from the flight data recorder.

Since 2015, there have been more than 35,000 fatalities annually due to crashes on United States roads [1], [2]. Typically, road departure crashes account for less than 10% of all annual crash occupants yet comprise nearly one third of all crash fatalities in the US [3]. In the year 2020, road departure crashes accounted for 50% of crash fatalities [2]. Road departure crashes are characterized by a vehicle leaving the intended lane of travel, departing the roadway, and striking a roadside object, such as a tree or pole, or roadside condition, such as a slope or body of water. One strategy currently implemented to mitigate these types of crashes is the use of roadside barriers. Roadside barriers, such as metal guardrails, concrete barriers, and cable barriers, are designed to reduce the severity of road departure crashes by acting as a shield between the departed vehicle and more hazardous roadside obstacles. Much like new vehicles undergo regulatory crash tests, barriers must adhere to a set of crash test procedures to ensure the barriers perform as intended. Currently, the procedures for full-scale roadside barrier crash tests used to evaluate the crash performance of roadside safety hardware are outlined in The Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) [4]. During roadside barrier tests, the assessment of occupant injury risk is crucial, as the purpose of the hardware is to prevent the vehicle from colliding with a more detrimental roadside object, all the while minimizing, and not posing additional, risk to the occupants. Unlike the new vehicle regulatory crash tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), MASH does not require the use of instrumented anthropomorphic test devices (ATD). Instead, one of the prescribed occupant risk assessment methods in MASH is the flail space model (FSM), which was introduced in 1981 and models an occupant as an unrestrained point mass. The FSM is comprised of two crash severity metrics that can be calculated using acceleration data from the test vehicle. Each metric is prescribed a maximum threshold in MASH and if either threshold is exceeded during a crash test the test fails due to high occupant injury risk. Since the inception of the FSM metrics and their thresholds, the injury prediction capabilities of these metrics have only been re-investigated in the frontal crash mode, despite MASH prescribing an oblique 25-degree impact angle for passenger vehicle barrier tests. The focus of this dissertation was to use EDR data from real-world crashes to assess the current relevance of roadside barrier crash test occupant risk assessment methods to the modern vehicle fleet and occupant population. Injury risk prediction models were constructed for the two FSM-based metrics and five additional crash severity metrics for three crash modes: frontal, side, and oblique. For each crash mode and metric combination, four injury prediction models were constructed: one to predict probability of injury to any region of the body and three to predict probability of injury to the head/face, neck, and thorax regions. While the direct application of these models is to inform future revisions of MASH crash test procedures, the developed models have valuable applications for other areas of transportation safety besides just roadside safety. The final two chapters of this dissertation explore these additional applications: 1) assessing the injury mitigation effectiveness of an advanced automatic emergency braking system, and 2) informing speed limit selection that supports the safe system approach. The findings in this dissertation indicate that both the FSM and additional crash severity metrics do a reasonable job predicting occupant injury risk in oblique crashes. One of the additional metrics performs better than the two FSM metrics. Additionally, several occupant factors, such as belt status and age, play significant roles in occupant risk prediction. These findings have important implications for future revisions of MASH, which could benefit from considering additional metrics and occupant factors in the occupant risk assessment procedures. / Doctor of Philosophy / Every year, there are more than 35,000 fatalities due to crashes on United States roads. While there are many different types of crashes, there is a small collection of crash types that are responsible for the majority of these fatalities. One of the worst crash types is a road departure crash. Road departure crashes describe when a vehicle leaves the roadway and collides with an object off the roadway (such as a tree, pole, or ditch). Road departure crashes typically comprise 10% of crashes but are responsible for more than 30% of the annual crash fatalities. In 2020, road departure crashes were responsible for 50% of the 39,000 fatalities. One strategy that is currently used to reduce road departure fatalities is the use of roadside barriers. Common roadside barrier types include metal guardrails, concrete barriers, and cable guardrails, and are used to prevent vehicles that are departing the roadway from hitting an object that would be more dangerous than the barrier. To ensure barriers successfully protect the vehicle and vehicle occupants from heightened danger, they are crash tested in scenarios that are designed to mimic real-world crashes. The Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) is the document that currently outlines the details necessary to conduct one of these crash tests. During roadside barrier tests, it is crucial to determine whether occupants are at risk of injury or fatality. For a variety of reasons, barrier tests do not use the traditional crash test dummies, which are designed to replicate human presence in a crash vehicle. Instead, MASH recommends using vehicle velocity data to assess how much risk is posed to an occupant. Using this velocity data, two values can be computed and if either value exceeds the maximum values provided in MASH, the crash test fails due to high occupant risk. The suggestion to use velocity data to assess occupant risk was first introduced in 1981. Since then, there have been significant advances in vehicle design, barrier design, and occupants' willingness to partake in safe habits, such as wearing seatbelts. Therefore, it is necessary to determine if the occupant risk values used in MASH are still applicable today. The focus of this dissertation was to use real-world crash data to assess the current relevance of roadside barrier crash test occupant risk values. The results presented in this dissertation can be used to select new occupant risk values in future versions of MASH. The findings within this dissertation show that the current methods in MASH do a good job estimating an occupant's risk of injury. Additionally, the findings show that certain occupant factors, such as the age of an occupant and whether the occupant is belted, help to more accurately estimate occupant injury risk. This finding has important implications for MASH, which does not currently consider different occupant conditions.

Event data recorders (EDRs) are an invaluable data source that have begun to, and will increasingly, provide novel insight into motor vehicle crash characteristics. The "black boxes" in automobiles, EDRs directly measure precrash and crash kinematics. This data has the potential to eclipse the many traditional surrogate measures used in vehicle safety that often rely upon assumptions and simplifications of real world crashes. Although EDRs have been equipped in passenger vehicles for over two decades, the recent establishment of regulation has greatly affected the quantity, resolution, duration, and accuracy of the recorded data elements. Thus, there was not only a demand to reestablish confidence in the data, but a need to demonstrate the potential of the data. The objectives of the research presented in this dissertation were to (1) validate EDR data accuracy in full-frontal, side-impact moving deformable barrier, and small overlap crash tests; (2) evaluate EDR survivability beyond regulatory crash tests, (3) determine the seat belt accuracy of current databases, and (4) assess the merits of other vehicle-based crash severity metrics relative to delta-v. This dissertation firstly assessed the capabilities of EDRs. Chapter 2 demonstrated the accuracy of 176 crash tests, corresponding to 29 module types, 5 model years, 9 manufacturers, and 4 testing configurations from 2 regulatory agencies. Beyond accuracy, Chapter 3 established that EDRs are anecdotally capable of surviving extreme events of vehicle fire, vehicle immersion, and high delta; although the frequency of these events are very rare on U.S. highways. The studies in Chapters 4 and 5 evaluated specific applications intended to showcase the potential of EDR data. Even single value data elements from EDRs were shown to be advantageous. In particular, the seat belt use status may become a useful tool to supplement crash investigators, especially in low severity crashes that provide little forensic evidence. Moreover, time-series data from EDRs broadens the number of available vehicle-based crash severity metrics that can be utilized. In particular, EDR data was used to calculate vehicle pulse index (VPI), which was shown to have modestly increased predictive abilities of serious injury compared to the widely used delta-v among belted occupants. Ultimately, this work has strong implications for EDR users, regulatory agencies, and future technologies. / Ph. D.

Cadastral reinstatement methods within Queensland involve the use of modern digital surveying techniques in combination with traditional non-digital methods of recording and reporting information. This leads to the need to manually enter and re-enter data into a digital format at different stages of a survey. The requirement to lodge survey information with government organisations in a non-digital survey plan format also forces a break in digital data flow throughout the cadastral surveying system, which can only be updated by changes in the lodgement regulations. The private cadastral organisations are predominantly responsible for carrying out the cadastral surveys and the government agencies are primarily responsible for the examination, verification and administration of the cadastral data. These organisations will have no communication link for digital cadastral data until the introduction of digital data lodgement. The digital system within the private cadastral surveying organisations can therefore be considered to be an independent system with consideration needed to be given to the future introduction of a digital lodgement system at some undefined time in the future. Cadastral surveyors hold large amounts of digital information that is suitable for digital reinstatement systems. This information, if appropriately archived and distributed, has the capacity to meet the needs of reinstatement systems including as an alternative source of digital information that will eventually be obtained from digital lodgement systems. The existing technology and the private organisation structures are capable of supporting continuous digital data flow and automated systems. This research proposes a process of development for private cadastral organisations to advance from traditional systems to continuous digital data flow and automated processes within their cadastral reinstatement systems. The development process is linked to existing legislation and technology taking into consideration likely future directions. The current legislative and technological environments within Queensland allow for development towards automated digital systems that will enhance most current cadastral reinstatement systems.

This thesis describes the design of flight data recorder for UL aircraft. The theoretical part describes the basic principles of measurement of the quantities in relation to the operation of the aircraft, such as altitude, air speed. A separate chapter deals with systems for determining of GPS position. Furthermore, there are examples of instruments measuring these quantities. The practical part is focused on the description of selected components and their connection to PIC24FJ64GA004 microcontroller. This is followed by a description of the control of USB drives with USB Controller Vinculum-II. The work is finished by the functional test of the device.

Every year, approximately 34,000 individuals are fatally injured in crashes on US roads [1]. These fatalities occur across many types of crash scenarios, each with its own causation factors. One way to prioritize research on a preventive technology is to compare the number of occupant fatalities relative to the total number of occupants involved in a crash scenario. Four crash modes are overrepresented among fatalities: single vehicle road departure crashes, control loss crashes, cross-centerline head-on crashes, and pedestrian/cyclist crashes [2]. Interestingly, three of these crash scenarios require the subject vehicle to depart from the initial lane of travel. Lane departure warning (LDW) systems track the vehicle lane position and can alert the driver through audible and haptic feedback before the vehicle crosses the lane line. Lane departure prevention (LDP) systems can perform an automatic steering maneuver to prevent the departure. Another method of prioritizing research is to determine factors common among the fatal crashes. In 2017, 30.4% of passenger vehicle crash fatalities involved a vehicle rollover [1]. Half of all fatal single vehicle road departure crashes resulted in a rollover yet only 12% of fatal multi-vehicle crashes involved a rollover [1]. These often occur after the driver has lost control of the vehicle and departed the road. Electronic stability control (ESC) can provide different braking to each wheel and allow the vehicle to maintain heading. While ESC is a promising technology, some rollover crashes still occur. Passive safety systems such as seat belts, side curtain airbags, and stronger roofs work to protect occupants during rollover crashes. Seat belts prevent occupants from moving inside the occupant compartment during the rollover and both seat belts and side curtain airbags can prevent occupants from being ejected from the vehicle. Stronger roofs ensure that the roof is not displaced during the rollover and the integrity of the occupant compartment is maintained to prevent occupant ejection. The focus of this dissertation is to evaluate the effectiveness of vehicle-based countermeasures, such as lane departure warning and electronic stability control, for preventing or mitigating single vehicle road departure crashes, cross-centerline head-on crashes, and single vehicle rollover crashes. This was accomplished by understanding how drivers respond to both road departure and cross-centerline events in real-world crashes. These driver models were used to simulate real crash scenarios with LDW/LDP systems to quantify their potential crash reduction. The residual crashes, which are not avoided with LDW/LDP systems or ESC, were analyzed to estimate the occupant injury outcome. For rollover crashes, a novel injury model was constructed that includes modern passive safety countermeasures such as seat belts, side curtain airbags, and stronger roofs. The results for road departure, head-on, and control loss rollover crashes were used to predict the number of crashes and injured occupants in the future. This work is important for identifying the residual crashes that require further research to reduce the number of injured crash occupants. / Doctor of Philosophy / Every year in the US, approximately 34,000 individuals are fatally injured in many different types of crashes. However, some crash types are more dangerous than other crash types. Drift-out-of-lane (DrOOL) road departure crashes, control loss road departure crashes, head-on crashes, and pedestrian crashes are more likely to result in an occupant fatality than other crash modes. In three of these more dangerous crash types, the vehicle departs from the lane before the crash occurs. Lane departure warning (LDW) systems can detect when the vehicle is about to cross the lane line and notify the driver with beeping or vibrating the steering wheel. A different system, called lane departure prevention (LDP), can provide automatic steering to prevent the vehicle from leaving the lane or return lane. In control loss crashes, the vehicle's motion is in a different direction than the vehicle's heading. During control loss, it is easier for the vehicle to roll over which is very dangerous. Electronic stability control (ESC) can prevent control loss by applying selective braking to each tire to keep the vehicle's motion in the same direction as the vehicle's heading. If a rollover still occurs, vehicles are equipped with passive safety systems and designs such as seat belts, side curtain airbags, and stronger roofs to protect the people inside. Seat belts can prevent occupants from striking the vehicle interior during the rollover and both seat belts and side curtain airbags can prevent occupants from being ejected from the vehicle. Stronger roofs ensure that the roof is not displaced during the rollover to prevent occupants from being ejected from the vehicle. The focus of this dissertation is to estimate how many crashes LDW, LDP, and ESC systems could prevent. This was accomplished by understanding how drivers respond after leaving their lane in real crashes. Then, these real crash scenarios were simulated with an LDW or LDP system to estimate how many crashes were prevented. The occupants of residual crashes, which were not prevented by the simulated systems, were analyzed to estimate the number of occupants with at least one moderate injury. Understanding which crashes and injuries that were not prevented with this technology can be used to decide where future research should occur to prevent more fatalities in road departure, head-on and control loss crashes.

Using data from the frequency disturbance recorders (FDRs) that comprise the nation-wide frequency monitoring network known as FNET, disturbances in the eastern interconnected system (EI) have been monitored and recorded over the past several years. Analysis of this and other data by a wide variety of research scientists and engineers has rendered the idea that frequency disturbances from generator trips, transmission line trips, load trips, and other events, travel with finite speed as electromechanical waves throughout any power system (in this case the EI). Using FNET data as a tool, it is possible to measure and output the arrival times of these disturbance waves with a time resolution of 100 ms. To observe with certainty the arrival time of the frequency disturbance waves, field data collected by the FDRs must first be conditioned in a robust manner. The current method that uses the moving mean of raw FDR data is analyzed and two computationally efficient robust methods are suggested in this report. These new methods that rely on robust statistics are more resistant to the effect of outliers contained within the raw FDR data. Furthermore, like the moving mean, these methods smooth the raw data without removing the general trend. Having recorded and conditioned the FDR data, three conventional triangulation techniques taken from the field of seismology are proposed and analyzed. This study reconfirms the fact that the EI is not a medium of continuous elasticity though which the frequency perturbations travel but rather a discontinuous patchwork of varying elasticities. Within this report, nine generator trip events are analyzed and the aforementioned triangulation methods are applied. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. To conclude, axioms of future research are proposed and delineated. / Master of Science

ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / One of the initial control room capabilities to be demonstrated by iNET program is the ability to provide data displays in the control room that do not contain data dropouts. This concept is called PCM Backfill where PCM data is both transmitted via traditional SST and recorded onboard via an iNET compatible recorder. When data dropouts occur, data requests are made over the telemetry network to the recorder for the missing portions of the PCM data stream. The retrieved data is sent over the telemetry network to the backfill application and ultimately delivered to a pristine data display. The integration of traditional SST and the PCM Backfill capability provides both real-time safety of flight data side-by-side with pristine data suitable for advanced analysis.