Atmospheric monitoring is a vital part of environmental management. Monitoring temporal changes in atmospheric pollution on a local, regional and global scale is important in order to mitigate adverse effects on health and the environment. Currently there is general agreement that atmospheric pollution should be monitored, however, less emphasis is often placed on what should be achieved and the specific monitoring that should be included. Atmospheric pollution monitoring is often hampered by geographically restricted and site specific effects resulting in inefficient or ineffective information transfer to the local manager. The scientific community in the developed world often underestimate problems associated with the maintenance of comprehensive atmospheric measurement stations in Africa. A holistic approach is needed to optimise atmospheric monitoring according to specifications set out by system design; this includes site selection, site design, maintenance and quality control. The aim of this dissertation is to apply the Systems Engineering approach to a case study, the Welgegund atmospheric measurement station (WAMS), to offer a holistic view of interaction between different operational systems and the complexity behind their management in order to be informative to students and personnel from a non-engineering background. A knowledge gap exists that links practical industry related sciences such as engineering to more fundamental and theoretical sciences. In this dissertation the customer need was determined and an operational concept was developed for the WAMS system. The high level goals of the WAMS were derived and stated as applicable to other new as well as established measurement stations. Technical and fundamental requirements such as trained staff for appropriate logistical support and a broad spatial coverage of air quality monitoring were identified. The system boundaries and operational constraints were established for the WAMS, exposing weaknesses and proposing solutions to ensure long term sustainability. Weaknesses include irregular funding periods and retention of expertise (trained students leave academia for industry) whereas a possible solution included overlapping projects and contracts. Functional analysis highlighted the design and establishment process of the WAMS. Physical architectures and interfaces were explored and finally the success of the establishment of the WAMS was evaluated by a reliability block diagram. The reliability of the WAMS system was calculated to be 96.6 %. This agrees well with the percentage data coverage calculated for the gaseous (95.9 %), aerosol (93.4 %) and meteorological (94.6 %) systems (15 min averages). The reliability of the national grid to supply power to the WAMS was found to be the main restrictive component. It may be a challenge interacting and coordinating projects with different disciplines, branches or sectors outside of a speciality project. This study has bridged the gap between industry related sciences such as engineering to more fundamental and theoretical sciences. A framework has been provided that highlights the techniques of Systems Engineering and provides an understanding for the need and process of atmospheric monitoring. / MIng (Development and Management Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Atmospheric monitoring is a vital part of environmental management. Monitoring temporal changes in atmospheric pollution on a local, regional and global scale is important in order to mitigate adverse effects on health and the environment. Currently there is general agreement that atmospheric pollution should be monitored, however, less emphasis is often placed on what should be achieved and the specific monitoring that should be included. Atmospheric pollution monitoring is often hampered by geographically restricted and site specific effects resulting in inefficient or ineffective information transfer to the local manager. The scientific community in the developed world often underestimate problems associated with the maintenance of comprehensive atmospheric measurement stations in Africa. A holistic approach is needed to optimise atmospheric monitoring according to specifications set out by system design; this includes site selection, site design, maintenance and quality control. The aim of this dissertation is to apply the Systems Engineering approach to a case study, the Welgegund atmospheric measurement station (WAMS), to offer a holistic view of interaction between different operational systems and the complexity behind their management in order to be informative to students and personnel from a non-engineering background. A knowledge gap exists that links practical industry related sciences such as engineering to more fundamental and theoretical sciences. In this dissertation the customer need was determined and an operational concept was developed for the WAMS system. The high level goals of the WAMS were derived and stated as applicable to other new as well as established measurement stations. Technical and fundamental requirements such as trained staff for appropriate logistical support and a broad spatial coverage of air quality monitoring were identified. The system boundaries and operational constraints were established for the WAMS, exposing weaknesses and proposing solutions to ensure long term sustainability. Weaknesses include irregular funding periods and retention of expertise (trained students leave academia for industry) whereas a possible solution included overlapping projects and contracts. Functional analysis highlighted the design and establishment process of the WAMS. Physical architectures and interfaces were explored and finally the success of the establishment of the WAMS was evaluated by a reliability block diagram. The reliability of the WAMS system was calculated to be 96.6 %. This agrees well with the percentage data coverage calculated for the gaseous (95.9 %), aerosol (93.4 %) and meteorological (94.6 %) systems (15 min averages). The reliability of the national grid to supply power to the WAMS was found to be the main restrictive component. It may be a challenge interacting and coordinating projects with different disciplines, branches or sectors outside of a speciality project. This study has bridged the gap between industry related sciences such as engineering to more fundamental and theoretical sciences. A framework has been provided that highlights the techniques of Systems Engineering and provides an understanding for the need and process of atmospheric monitoring. / MIng (Development and Management Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The current air traffic management system has primarily evolved via incremental changes around historic control, navigation, and surveillance technologies. As a result, the system as a whole is not capable of handling air traffic capacities well beyond current levels, despite recent developments, such as ADS-B, that could potentially enable new concepts of operation. Methods of analyzing air traffic for safety and performance have also evolved around current-day operating constructs. Thus, attempts to examine future systems tend to use different analysis methods developed for each. Most notably, questions of 'locus of control' - whether the control should be centralized or de-centralized and distributed - have no common framework by which to judge relative costs and benefits. For instance, a completely centralized control paradigm is commonly asserted to provide an airspace-wide optimal traffic management solution due to a more complete picture of the state of the airspace, whereas a completely decentralized control paradigm is commonly asserted to provide a more user-specific optimal traffic management solution, to distribute the traffic management workload, and potentially be more robust. Given the disparate nature of these assertions and the different types of evaluations commonly used with each, some shared framework must be established to allow comparisons between very different control paradigms. The objective of this thesis was to construct a formal framework to examine the relative costs and benefits of shifting the locus of control in a novel air traffic management environment. This framework provides useful definitions and quantitative measures of flexibility and robustness with respect to various control paradigms ranging between, and including, completely centralized and completely decentralized concepts of operation. Multi-agent dynamic analysis and simulation was used to analyze the range of dynamics found in the different control paradigms. In addition, futuristic air traffic management concepts were developed in sufficient detail to demonstrate the framework. In other words, the objectives were met because the framework was demonstrated to have the ability to identify (or dispel) hypotheses about the relative costs and benefits of locus of control.

Current airspace regulations require the remote pilot-in-command of an unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to maintain visual line of sight with the vehicle for situational awareness. The future of UAS will not have these constraints as technology improves and regulations are changed. An operational model for the future of UAS is proposed where a remote operator will monitor remote vehicles with the capability to intervene if needed. One challenge facing this future operational concept is the ability for a flight data system to effectively communicate flight status to the remote operator. A system architecture has been developed to facilitate the implementation of such a flight data system. Utilizing the system architecture framework, a Phase I prototype was designed and built for two vehicles in the Autonomous Flight Laboratory (AFL) at Cal Poly. The project will continue to build on the success of Phase I, culminating in a fully functional command and control system for remote UAS operational testing.