The Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) is designed to enable the management and distribution of

Aeronautical Information Service The Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) is a service established in support of international civil aviation, whose objective is to ensure the flow of information necessary for the safety, regularity, and efficiency of international air navigatio ...

s (AIS) data in digital format. AIXM is based on

Geography Markup Language The Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic ...

(GML) and is one of the

GML Application Schemas The Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic ...

which is applicable for the

Aeronautical Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

domain. It was developed by the US

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

(

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

), the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the

European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol (stylised ''EUROCONTROL''), is an international organisation working to achieve safe and seamless air traffic management across Europe. Founded in 1960, Eur ...

(

EUROCONTROL The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol (stylised ''EUROCONTROL''), is an international organisation working to achieve safe and seamless air traffic management across Europe. Founded in 1960, Eur ...

).The current version is AIXM 5.1.1.

Model

AIXM has two main components: *The Aeronautical Information Conceptual Model *The AIXM

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

Schema

The Aeronautical Information Conceptual Model

The Aeronautical Information Conceptual Model (AICM) is a conceptual model of the aeronautical domain. It describes the features and their properties (

attributes Attribute may refer to: * Attribute (philosophy), an extrinsic property of an object * Attribute (research), a characteristic of an object * Grammatical modifier, in natural languages * Attribute (computing), a specification that defines a proper ...

and associations) within the domain. Therefore, it can be used as the logical basis for

Aeronautical Information Management Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

databases and AIXM. The model is designed using the

Unified Modelling Language The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

(UML).

AIXM XML Schema

The AIXM XML Schema is an exchange model for

aeronautical Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

data and a concrete implementation of AICM. It is an implementation of the Conceptual Model as an

XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of Extensible Markup Language, XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed ...

. Therefore, it can be used to send

information to others in the form of

encoded data, enabling systems to exchange aeronautical information.

Purpose

The aim of AIXM is to allow for the management and distribution of AIS data in a digital format. This includes information such as

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

area data,

airspace Airspace is the portion of the atmosphere controlled by a country above its territory, including its territorial waters or, more generally, any specific three-dimensional portion of the atmosphere. It is not the same as aerospace, which is the ...

structures, organisations and units, points and navaids, procedures, routes and flying restrictions. Current versions are also designed to be able to manage and distribute the full timeline of aeronautical data, including temporary updates. These features form a key part of the EUROCONTROL backed move from AIS to Aeronautical Information Management (AIM), the transition from using data based on paper documentation and telex messages to using solely digital data.

History

Development of AIXM was initially started in order to facilitate the development of the European AIS Database (EAD). The development of AICM was started in 1996, with an initial release in 1997, which allowed for the development of the AIXM XML Schema. Initial developments were “ SQL-based”, with development moving to XML in 1999. The first version of the schema was released in 1999 as AICM/AIXM 2.1 with further development leading to an updated version, AICM/AIXM 3.3 in 2002. This then allowed the EAD to begin operations in 2003. After this, EUROCONTROL began a partnership with the FAA and the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in order to further develop AIXM for international usage and cover global civilian and military needs. The AIXM Change Control Board (ACCB) was set up to allow for international states and industries to participate in the development of AIXM. In 2004 AIXM 4.0 was released with an update (4.5) in 2005 which was the first version to incorporate suggestions from the ACCB and the international community. Version 5.0 was developed through a public design review meeting at the 2006 Global AIM Congress. AIXM 5.0 aligned the format with current ISO standards for geospatial information, including GML, allowed for modular development and future extension and was also the first version to enable digital NOTAM. This version is still in use by some “early adopters” including the FAA.

AIXM Viewers

Whilst AIXM does use GML standards, it cannot be viewed with standard GML viewers as aeronautical data requires specialised processing. EUROCONTROL and the FAA maintain a list of AIXM viewers developed by EUROCONTROL, Luciad and Snowflake Software (now part of Cirium). EUROCONTROL also maintains a list of free sample data that can be used with these viewers.

References

External links

* *
Free 3D AIXM Viewer

Free AIXM 5 2D and 3D viewer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aixm Industry-specific XML-based standards GIS file formats