The North Star Group in collaboration with ITT Corporation, has developed and released a prototype web portal that is designed to demonstrate the technical feasibility and rich feature set which is available using the World Wide Web as a service delivery platform. This effort was performed in support of the selection process related to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) program and the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) initiative.
The primary goal of this development effort was to provide the end-user a functional and feature rich display, through the use of web browser technology, that provided views similar to what is seen in Air Traffic Control (ATC) towers and a pilot’s cockpit avionics display. These views provide positional (latitude, longitude, altitude and velocity) information regarding aircraft within a user selected area overlaid on geographical maps or satellite imagery.
Development of the web portal used Rapid Application Development processes and commonly available tools that enabled ITT Corporation to support the FAA without regard to available server platform or technologies. The development team used Adobe® Flex™ 2.0 which is a cross-platform development framework used to create rich Internet applications (RIAs) and the Macromedia Flash 5.0 development tool. The use of Flex™ 2.0 enables developers to build rich, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems. Additionally, the team used Yahoo! Maps AS3 API library for all mapping information and visuals. The real-time weather and aircraft data-stream was provided by ITT Corporation and then converted into XML which was then used to create the views.
“The North Star Group is pleased to have made such a significant contribution in assisting ITT on this major winning bid,” according to Dave Spencer, Managing Director and Chief Information Officer.
About North Star Group, LLC
The North Star Group, LLC is a professional services firm focused on Strategic Planning, Project Management and Information Technology solutions for the commercial and government sectors including consulting, interim management, staffing/outsourcing, and training. Our expertise encompasses the full corporate lifecycle from strategic planning to tactical execution including process and control. For additional information, please contact us at 443-541-8434, or visit http://compasscyber.com.
