Abstract

ArcGIS for FAA Airspace Obstruction Analysis
Track: Analysis and Geoprocessing
Authors: Robert Caughey, Joel Paulson

When the San Diego International Airport Authority (SDIAA) wanted to construct additions to their existing terminals an updated Airspace Obstruction Analysis was required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) per FAA Advisory Circular 150/5300-18B. For the study, SDIAA chose Nolte Vertical V to perform the analysis. Because of the large number of potential obstructions to San Diego International Airport airspace, Lidar was used for base mapping purposes resulting in a voluminous amount of data, approximately 2.25 billion points. This made ArcGIS Desktop an obvious choice. This session will discuss how tools in the 3D Analyst toolbox were instrumental in making the task feasible, timely and productive. Additionally, ArcGIS' ability to sort extremely large data sets allowed for consistent methodology to extract the data required by the FAA. This was accomplished even with data sources using various datums due to ArcGIS' ability to place them all on a common projection.