𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗲: 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗽
You may have heard of eTOD (electronic Terrain and Obstacle Data) and mistakenly thought it’s a single dataset. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Like you don’t put 🧅oignons in your fruit salad, you don’t mix obstacles and terrain: they are different data formats.
𝗜𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
🫛Obstacles
🥣Obstacle areas
Yes, this dataset only has 1 ingredient and the bowl to contain it. To make it more interesting, PANS-AIM defines mandatory attributes:
✅Location
✅Elevation (highest point, AMSL)
✅Identifier
✅Type (antenna, building…)
✅Lighting details
…including some attributes not in the AIP:
✨Extent
✨For mobile obstacles, “feature operations” (why it is mobile)
✨Sprinkled with metadata (stay tuned for more about this!)
The only optional attribute is the height (AGL). We dare to say this should be mandatory because:
👉It is mandatory in ENR 5.4 and AD 2.10
👉This dataset doesn’t include terrain elevation, so one cannot compute the height
👉Height is useful to pilots
👉and is needed to produce eCharts
👉Annex 4 recommends to show obstacles height
What do you think?
🍜Enjoy your Obstacles datasoup! Does your AIS publish an Obstacles dataset? Is it Annex 15-compliant? Tell us in a comment.💬
hashtagAIMWithNilacandi hashtagAIXM hashtagais2aim hashtagaeronauticalinformation
