(Oct 20, 2005)

The Aviation System Monitoring and Modeling (ASMM) Project Team received a prestigious R&D 100 Award from the editors of R&D 100 Magazine for the development of the Morning Report of Atypical Flights tool. Morning Report was also the recipient of the previously unannounced Editors' Choice Award for "the innovation most likely to impact public safety." Morning Report analyzes massive amounts of operational data to identify patterns and events that could signify problems during flight. The technology was developed by researchers at Pacific Northwest Laboratory in a joint effort with researchers at NASA Ames Research Center, Battelle Memorial Institute, Flight Safety Consultants, and ProWorks Corp. The awards banquet was held on October 20, 2005 in Chicago, Illinois. Tom Chidester, ASMM project lead, and Irv Statler from the ASMM project office at NASA Ames attended. The Morning Report of Atypical Flights tool searches for the unexpected and reveals the unknowns. The tool automatically analyzes the flight data recorded by each aircraft in an airline's fleet during a selected period of time. Then it brings to the safety analyst's attention all of the flights that were deemed atypical in a multivariate statistical analysis with respect to the main body of comparable flight data. Morning Report has also received a NASA Space Act Award and a patent is pending.