For several decades, international civil aviation has had to overcome challenges and demonstrate its ability to withstand major shocks and disruptions. This was made possible thanks to the commitment of aviation professionals across the globe, who developed and implemented processes and technical solutions to enhance the resilience of the sector. When there are disruptions to global operations the challengers are system-wide. Measures to build and strengthen resilience in aviation have to support ICAO’s Strategic Objectives in Safety, Air Navigation Capacity and Efficiency, Security & Facilitation, Economic Development of Air Transport and Environmental Protection.
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected air transport operations and future aviation operations, putting people at the center of the response: travellers and aviation professionals alike. A global consensus emerged on the pivotal role of aviation workers in finding and implementing solutions for the conduct of aviation operations, at all levels and across the aviation value chain.
With this in mind, the resilient future of international civil aviation cannot materialize without a workforce aware of the challenges faced by the sector and ready to commit to imagining the aviation it wants. By resilience, we have to look to the abilities of the aviation sector to ensure the continuity of air mobility while progressing the five ICAO Strategic Objectives and contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This became the Problem Statement for ICAO’s 2024 Innovation Competion.
In 2022, ICAO launched the ICAO Innovation Competition under the theme of “Innovation and Resilience in Aviation” to spark innovative ideas and concepts for new solutions or services supporting the six ICAO Strategic Objectives mentioned above, as well as the UN SDGs. The global competition was open to university students enrolled in a final year of a Bachelor’s programme or in a Master’s programme. As part of this global competition, we invited students to propose innovative solutions with the aim:
- to create a more resilient aviation ecosystem for 2050;
- to contribute to the emergence of innovative concepts, tools and approaches for new solutions or services supporting some or all of the five ICAO Strategic Objectives, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in particular SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”; and
- to share their expectations and visions for the future, focussing on the emergence of disruptive ideas for the benefits of the overall aviation community.
The competition attracted submissions from 40 teams of students from countries across all regions of the world. The jury panel was comprised of a wide variety of international aerospace leaders:
- Mr. Salvatore Sciacchitano, President of the ICAO Council;
- Mr. Juan Carlos Salazar, Secretary General of the International Civil Aviation Organization;
- Mr. Zurab Pololikashvili, Secretary General of the UN World Tourism Organization;
- Mr. Simon Hocquard, Director General of the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (CANSO);
- Ms. Angela Albritton, Representative of ALICANTO;
- Mr. Luis Felipe de Oliveira, Director General of Airports Council International (ACI);
- Mr. Eric Fanning, Chairperson of the International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Associations (ICCAIA);
ICAO Council President Salvatore Sciacchitano announced the selection of the winning entry during the ICAO Innovation Fair. “After careful deliberation, we are pleased to announce that the winner of the ICAO Innovation Competition is MIRLO,” Mr. Sciacchitano said. “Their proposal stood out for its innovative and multi-disciplinary approach, including the understanding of language structure and syntax, the intricacies of aeronautical communication, and biomimicry.”
“The competition has been intense, with submissions reflecting the unparalleled creativity and expertise of our global aviation community,” remarked ICAO Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar. “Submissions encompassed priorities including technological advancements in the area of air traffic management, data exchange, and advanced air mobility, along with implementation support to new policy frameworks.”
Annex 1 – Personnel Licensing to the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation requires all license holders to “use a dialect or accent which is intelligible to the aeronautical community” when conducting radiotelephony communications. What if we could go one step further than that and eliminate dialects and accents altogether? That was the question asked by the University of Costa Rica’s MIRLO Team: Michael Josué Chaves Vargas, Maryam Safaifard, and Morelia Soto-Garro.
In their submission, the MIRLO team proposed that “Each pilot and air traffic controller trains a pre-trained speech recognition model with their own voice. Then, in real time, an accurate voice-to-text transcription of what is communicated via radio frequency will be broadcast.” The researchers had taken their inspiration from bird species that make flight calls during migration, noting how research assisted by machine learning had revealed that birds with similar calls share similar migrations, regardless of how closely related the species are.
The three teams pictured below were invited to the Innovation Fair to share presentations on the projects they had entered in the competition. Congratulations to all! During the event we announced that the theme of the next Innovation Competition will focus on artificial intelligence in aviation. Be sure to check the event website for updates on the competition.
Finalist Team iAssist: Ms. Diandra-Sorana GRAMA, Mr. Angelo Giovanni Gaillet, Mr. Karan Karan, Mr. Ankush Kumar, and Mr. Uday Chandra Gollapalli