Experimental Deployments and Trials
Belgium Air Force has started a Site Acceptance Procedure for using LARA within the Belgian Military. At a later stage MUAC and Belgocontrol are foreseen to join the LARA Cluster. First tests are ongoing. Some challenges have surfaced regarding the network setup between civil and military partners, which are being worked on currently.
The UK and the LARA Team are currently finalising plans for implementation in the UK. Training sessions are being coordinated and the first steps of the implementation scheduled.
MCCE is about to start the official LARA Experimental Agreement and is working with the LARA Team on the details of the implementation. The LARA Team will provide training and support to the installation of LARA in Rumania in September of this year.
The FABEC Live Trial has been completed successfully. LARA was used on a daily basis to visualise, assess and optimize the airspace planning throughout the FABEC Countries.
LARA is one of the systems earmarked for validation within SESAR, namely the 7.5.2 Advance FUA Project.
Software Development
Graffica is working on LARA Version 2.1 currently. The delivery is foreseen for later this year. The main area of improvement is the database performance to allow managing a number of interconnected LARA Clusters efficiently and support the different FAB Scenarios. Additional improvements have been agreed at the LARA Workshop earlier this year.
HMI Improvements have been discussed with a number of users during trials and experimental deployments. The LARA Team will schedule a workshop with involved users after the HMI has been used operationally for a certain amount of time to gather their feedback and to find solutions acceptable to all.
Other Activities
LARA has been presented to a number of organisations and individuals including the FABCE and SESAR Partners. In EUROCONTROL HQ the LARA Team presented LARA within the scope of “The Neighbour’s Garden” to EUROCONTROL colleagues from all sites.
The LARA Team is in the process of drafting documents regarding the interoperability and conformity in line with community regulations. These documents will be made available as soon as finalized.
LARA was featured at an ICAO Civil-Military Workshop held at Lima, Peru to demonstrate potential improvement measures in Airspace Management.
The next LARA User Group Meeting will be held on September 8th in EUROCONTROL HQ in Brussels.