Challenges with obstacle data for manned and unmanned aviation

The objective of this paper is to raise awareness about the significance of collecting and ensuring the quality of the obstacle data required for the safety of air navigation for both manned and unmanned aviation. This information could be of importance to geodetic, CityGML, 3D model and Building Information Management (BIM) community. With the advancement of future air mobility concepts such as drones and Personal Air Vehicles (PAVs), there is an increased demand for obstacle data of higher accuracy, including at Very Low Level (VLL) altitude. The paper presents the requirements pertaining to aviation such that the above mentioned communities could understand the existing complexity. This complexity adheres to the aggregation of quality-assured obstacle data from domains outside the aviation field’s responsibility. It is expected that with model developments (e.g. BIM), new solutions could be identified to support the aviation community with the aggregation of obstacle data of required quality.