ERAT is short for Environmentally Responsible Air Transport and the project acronym for an ATM research project that aims to reduce the environmental impact of air transport in the vicinity of airports. The project is co-funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme and has a total budget of approximately €7 million.

The objective of the ERAT project is to develop and validate two concepts of operations (CONOPSs), one for London Heathrow and one for Stockholm Arlanda. Both CONOPSs aim for reduced environmental impacts in the vicinity of airports, without compromising on safety or capacity.

To reach this goal, ERAT focuses on more efficient operations (less holding) and enabling Continuous Descent Approaches (CDAs) and Continuous Climb Departures (CCDs).
The final results from ERAT will contribute to one of the SESAR Performance Targets to reduce the environmental impact per flight by 10% in 2020.

Visualisations ERAT project shown at London Transport Museum

The London Transport Museum has recently opened the new exhibition ‘Sense and the City: smart, connected and on the move’. One of the topics that the exhibition addresses is data visualization and therefore the museum is now showing some of the visualisations that have been created for the ERAT project.

A centre piece of the exhibition is an interactive table with eight screens that allows visitors to view a wealth of film, animations, data visualisations and images on subjects ranging from the cashless society and driverless cars to reactive buildings and augmented reality. But also the ERAT visualisations, which show the fast-time and real-time simulations for the London Heathrow concept, are part of this centre piece.

The exhibition runs until 18 March 2012 in the London Transport Museum. For more information about the museum and the exhibition, please visit http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/.