ASBU – What is this?

ICAO Aviation System Block Upgrades

Although air traffic demand is not growing evenely everywhere, almost no part of the world is without some kind of air traffic management modernization project. In terms of overall cutting edge concepts and technology plans, the US, Europe and Japan are the undisputed leaders. At the same time, other regions like Latin-America and Asia-Pacific have shown leadership in the early application of advanced solutions like PBN.
While in the past ATM improvements were based on an infrastructure that was standardized world-wide (like VOR/DME or ILS) some of the new concepts are predicated on infrastructure improvements and new aircraft equipment that sometimes exist in different flavors and not all are necessarily compatible.
Adoption of different flavor solutions in different parts of the world raise the specter of a loss of interoperability, a situation that is extremely costly for the airspace users to remedy or to accommodate.
Even perfectly interoperable solutions, if implemented with no or little coordination in different parts of the world, can lead to mandates that can only be met with difficulty and excessive cost that is otherwise avoidable if a more structured approach is used.
In the past, the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) reputation has suffered somewhat as a result of the extremely bureaucratic way it approached everything and the glacial paced decision making this entailed. At the same time, ICAO continued to be the only world-wide body which was empowered to say the last word on most of aviations air traffic management related provisions and hence there was no way of going around this mostly benign, but sometimes still belligerent giant. Regions keen on improving their ATM environment tried hard to progress even while ICAO lagged and this was leading to a situation where, in spite of its importance, in some aspects ICAO was becoming irrelevant.
But no more! Under new management at the top and mindful of the economic crisis affecting the air transport industry, ICAO has transformed itself into a cost-conscious, business oriented organization that does make a genuine effort to help ATM evolution along.
The first product was the ICAO Global Air Traffic Management Operational Concept (ICAO Doc 9854) which was significant because, for the first time, it actually formalized even concepts like the transfer of separation responsibility to the cockpit. By the way, most of what you find in Doc 9854 was first written up in the context of the European ATM modernization project ATM2000+.
Of course an operational concept as such is of little value until you define how the concept will be implemented and describe the changes in the ATM infrastructure that need to be realized for the concept to work.

The best known such projects are the NextGen Air Transportation System (NextGen) in the US, the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) in Europe and the Collaborative Actions for Renovations of Air Traffic Systems (CARATS) in Japan.
Although there is some co-ordination between these projects and NextGen and SESAR are particularly keen on ensuring interoperability, there was no real, world-wide guidance on how to modernize an ATM system, whether in a single country or a region. With air traffic demand growing in leaps and bounds everywhere, the need for modernization was popping up in different countries and ICAO very correctly felt that not all of them would be up to the task of completing the projects in a safe and cost efficient manner.

To help with these highly complex tasks and to avoid repeating mistakes, it was decided that the experience available from NextGen, SESAR, CARAT as well as other, smaller projects should be shared for the benefit of the industry as a whole, everywhere in the world.
Of course it was also recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach would never work in the world-wide context and therefore the guidance had to take a form that would be useable and useful everywhere with clearly not every part of it being applicable in all cases and all locations.
The result was the ASBU or Aviation System Block Upgrades. ASBU comprises a suite of modules, each with the following essential characteristics:
• A clearly-defined measurable operational improvement and success metric;
• Necessary equipment and/or systems in aircraft and on ground along with an operational approval or certification plan;
• Standards and procedures for both airborne and ground systems; and
• A positive business case over a clearly defined period of time.
The modules are composed of flexible and scalable building blocks that can be implemented in a given country or a given region to meet identified needs and depending on the readiness of the given environment. Mindful of the fact that not all modules are required in all areas, the arrangement is such that it is possible to leave out certain modules so that the actual implementation can be customized for the prevailing circumstances. Modules can always be added later.
The Block Upgrades describe a way to apply the concepts defined in the ICAO Global Air Navigation Plan (Doc 9750) with the goal of implementing regional performance improvements. They will include the development of technology roadmaps, to ensure that standards are mature and to facilitate synchronized implementation between air and ground systems and between regions. The ultimate goal is to achieve global interoperability. Safety demands this level of interoperability and harmonization. Safety must be achieved at a reasonable cost with commensurate benefits.
Leveraging upon existing technologies, block upgrades are organized in five-year time increments starting in 2013 through 2028 and beyond. Such a structured approach provides a basis for sound investment strategies and will generate commitment from equipment manufacturers, States and operators/service providers. The block upgrades initiative will be formalized at the Twelfth Air Navigation Conference, in November 2012.
The development of block upgrades will be realized by the change of focus from top-down planning to more bottom-up and pragmatic implementation actions in the regions. The block upgrades initiative is an instrument that will influence ICAO’s work program in the coming years, specifically in the area of standards development and associated performance improvements.

But what exactly are these blocks and modules?
A MODULE is a deployable package representing some kind of performance or capability. Such a module will bring a defined performance benefit which is traceable to a change in operations and which is based on defined procedures, technology, regulations, standards and a business case. Each module will also be applicable only in a given operating environment. The modules will be created in a way that will make them suitable for being combined to fit the actual requirements without the need to implement elements that are not necessary.
A THREAD is a series of dependent modules across the block upgrades representing a coherent transition in time from basic to more advanced capability and associated performance. The date considered for allocating a module to a block is that of the Initial Operating Capability (IOC). A thread describes the evolution of a given capability through the successive block upgrades, from basic to more advanced capability and associated performance, while representing key aspects of the global ATM concept.
A BLOCK is made up of modules that when combined enable significant improvements and provide access to benefits. The notion of blocks introduces a form of quantization of the dates in five year intervals. However, detailed descriptions will allow the setting of more accurate implementation dates, often not at the exact reference date of a block upgrade. The purpose is not to indicate when a module implementation must be completed, unless dependencies among modules logically suggest such a completion date.
What is the Performance Improvement Area (PIA)? Sets of modules in each Block are grouped to provide operational and performance objectives in relation to the environment to which they apply, thus forming an executive view of the intended evolution. The PIAs facilitate comparison of ongoing programs.
The four Performance Improvement Areas are as follows:
1. Greener Airports
2. Globally Interoperable Systems and Data – through Globally Interoperable System-WideInformation Management
3. Optimum Capacity and Flexible Flights – through Global Collaborative ATM
4. Efficient Flight Path – through Trajectory Based Operations

You will notice that each block includes a target date. This is meant to be the Initial Operating Capability (IOC). At the time of creating the ASBU, blocks 0 and 1 were the most mature and blocks 1 and 2 are supposed to have sufficient substance to ensure that the vision for the future can properly drive the early implementation activity.
Each of the Modules that form the Blocks must meet a readiness review that includes the availability of standards (to include performance standards, approvals, advisory/guidance documents, etc.), avionics, infrastructure, ground  automation and other enabling capabilities.

An interesting and novel requirement against the modules is that in order to qualify for inclusion, each must have been implemented in at least two regions and must have all the necessary operational approvals and procedures in place. This ensures that later implementers can always draw on the experience of the pioneers.
The following figure shows the improvements expected from Block 0. While this is an impressive set of benefit sources, it also shows that States have not been doing their homework properly in the past ten to 15 years. Information management or en-route digital link has been on the table for a long long time and ASBU now introduces them with an IOC of 2013…

Anyway, ASBU is a good initiative because it does bring together the varied elements of ATM modernization activities from all over the world on the one hand and provides a wealth of shared experience to everyone involved on the other.
The 12th. Air Navigation Conference later this year will be discussing the ASBU and is expected to formulate the necessary decisions that will formalize the global co-ordinated deployment of block upgrades.
Of course, the ASBU is no silver bullet. It is a good framework, sound guidance and a depository of shared implementation experience that will help, but not substitute, good and sound planning on the local and regional levels. Perhaps the most important contribution of the ASBU is the way it highlights the global intertwining of ATM solutions and hence the need for global interoperability.
You can download the ASBU from here.
The ASBU module library is available here.
This article was written in part using ICAO material.