AIS.OR.350 Terrain and obstacle data – General requirements

GENERAL

(a)Useful information for those organisations involved in the origination, processing and provision of digital terrain and obstacle data, from the point at which the need for origination is identified through to the point when the Member State makes it available in accordance with the requirements of ICAO Annex 15, can be found in the EUROCONTROL ‘Terrain and Obstacle Data (TOD) Manual’ (edition 2.2, dated 28 November 2019).

(b)In addition, EUROCAE ED-98C ‘User Requirements For Terrain And Obstacle Data’ (October 2015) provides guidance for data gathering by data originators, for data processing by data integrators, for implementation by application integrators, and for end use by the aviation community (e.g. air carriers, air traffic services, procedure designers).

NAVIGATION APPLICATIONS

(a)Terrain and obstacle data are intended to be used in air navigation applications such as:

(1)ground proximity warning system with forward-looking terrain avoidance function and minimum safe altitude warning (MSAW) system;

(2)determination of contingency procedures for use in the event of an emergency during a missed approach or take-off;

(3)aircraft operating limitations analysis;

(4)instrument procedure design (including circling procedure);

(5)determination of en-route ‘drift-down’ procedure and en-route emergency landing location;

(6)advanced surface movement guidance and control system (A-SMGCS); and

(7)aeronautical chart production and on-board databases. Additional information on the use of terrain and obstacle data can be found in Appendix C to EUROCAE ED-98C.

(b)The data may also be used in other applications such as flight simulator and synthetic vision systems, and may assist in determining the height restriction or removal of obstacles that pose a hazard to air navigation.