Boiling Down Aviation Data: Development of the Aviation Data Distillery

Abstract

Army Aviation is one of the heaviest data consumers of all service branches, and is heavily reliant upon consistent data streams. Currently, a complex web of information systems contains the various pieces of data, which hinders not only the use of the existing data systems, but also the development of cutting-edge data consumers. The AVX Aircraft Company, under the direction of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center, assembled a team from industry and academia with uniquely complimentary skills to prototype and showcase a centralized data analysis space and toolset. Team members from the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State University developed a cloud-hosted integration environment, granting secure and compliant access to a variety of developers and other interested parties. PeopleTec, Inc. curated a comprehensive dataset from six different H-60 Blackhawk helicopters, including health and usage monitoring data, maintenance records, and flight recorder data. Researchers from the Institute for Materials, Manufacturing, and Sustainment at Texas Tech University set to work developing statistical data combinations and reductions, as well as interactive and novel visualizations of the above data and results. The final cloud-hosted toolset demonstrated the overwhelming value of the additional analysis capabilities a centralized data access portal could present to Army Aviation. The ability to rapidly draw conclusions from the alignment, refinement, and display of what are currently disparate data sources represents a massive opportunity to enhance the capability and reliability of units across U.S. Army Aviation.