Projects responsible for developing an ADS-B Performance evaluation framework, airport safety support tools, and passenger orientated metrics are the winners of the 2014 SESAR Awards. The winners were announced on 3 March 2014 at the World ATM Congress in Madrid, during a ceremony presided over by Mr Claude Chêne, Executive Director of the SESAR Joint Undertaking, and Florian Guillermet, Deputy Executive Director, Operations and Programme.               

The awards were conceived in order to recognise excellence within the SESAR Programme and to pay tribute to the hard work and commitment of the partners involved. A total of 21 projects were submitted for nomination, 7 Best in Class and 14 Outstanding projects. Sander Roosendall, Honeywell, Patrick Souchu, DSNA, and representatives of the SJU made up the jury. “I am pleased to have had the opportunity to present the SESAR Project Awards, which illustrates perfectly how the involvement of different ATM actors can bring unique added-value to the research and development process,” said Mr Chêne who presided over the ceremony 

In the Best in Class category, Project 9.21 was recognised for the considerable work it undertook in defining options and developing a framework for airborne ADS-B performance evaluation, which is now accepted by the global SESAR community and is being used by other programme projects. Project Manager Martina Stehlikova accepted the award on behalf of Honeywell.  The project has set a particularly high standard in terms of project management and professionalism. The efficiency, spirit of collaboration and level of focus of this project also makes it a model for other projects to follow. 

In the Outstanding Project, Mr Chêne commented on the difficulty the jury had in choosing a winner out of the 14 nominations. In fact, it proved so difficult to choose just one winner that the jury eventually decided that two entries deserved to be recognised. The first went to Project E.02.06, an exploratory research project whose work has brought a high added value to SESAR. This Passenger Oriented Enhanced Metrics (POEM) project developed a brand new network model to explicitly take into account passenger behaviours and propagation of passenger delay. This is one of the only research projects to study performance metrics that puts the passenger in the centre. The project set out to challenge current thinking of measuring performance by movement of aircraft to the movement of passengers. Andrew Cook of the University of Westminster accepted the award on behalf of all the project partners.

The second award in this category went to Project 6.7.1., which was outstanding given the number of working areas addressed and the wide range of stakeholders involved. The project was recognised for its pioneering role in developing Airport Safety Support Tools for Pilots, Vehicle Drivers and Controllers, with a very clear roadmap to 2016. The project has delivered excellent results on time and contributed efficiently to the SESAR airport safety domain. Christelle Pianetti, DSNA, accepted the award on behalf of all the project partners.