Stakeholder Web-Based Interrogable Federated Toolkit (SWIFT)

NASA applications include the following: As an interface to NASA's SMART-NAS system, SWIFT provides a "Software as a Service" (SaaS) model, the first of its kind, to the aviation community. NASA can offer its various tools (ACES, FACET, Sherlock and others) as a service that is accessible through SWIFT and connected through SMART-NAS. As an engine that connects to a database such as the NASA-developed Sherlock system, SWIFT can access that data to configure fast-time and real-time models that can make future projections. These future projections can be stored back into the database (if needed) and become accessible to other NASA analysts. As a stand-alone analysis engine, SWIFT can be used by NASA and non-NASA government employees to refine a study question (through PQL statements) and to execute the resulting analysis using the federated toolkit attached to the SWIFT web-based interface. As a tool to express analyses in standard format, NASA and other government researchers can use PQL statements, in a stand-alone mode, to specify research questions that can be shared with other researchers in a clear, easy-to-understand language that is compilable to actionable requests for aviation simulations. As a language that transcends aviation applications, PQL can be used for any projection of the future state of any system, including planetary systems, cosmological investigations, projections of the spread of disease, and so forth.

The potential non-NASA applications are isomorphic to the NASA applications except with a commercial intent. The SWIFT interface and IAI's government off-the-shelf federated toolkit can be used by aviation consultants, industry analysts, and other firms investigating one-off or multiple problems in aviation analysis. Example questions might be "If NextGen is configured to use performance-based navigation (PBN) approaches at [name an airport such as Miami International], what will be the effect on noise for the surrounding population?" Such a question would be formulated as a PQL statement, which would require precise specification of the metrics involved and the configuration of the simulation tools (traffic, weather, PBN routes). The smart phone pilot app can be used to plan a pilot's work day, allowing the pilot to access all available information about the airports of interest.. The PQL statements can be expanded to include non-aviation applications, such as applications in medicine, earthquake prediction, other scientific areas, and sociological projections. More »