From 24 to 28 November, Indra—a member of the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking (JU)—hosted a validation exercise for the HARMONIC and ISLAND projects at its facilities in Madrid. Run as a joint simulation with NATS and supported by EUROCONTROL, the event brought together operational experts and technical teams to test solutions designed to make European airspace more adaptable.
Managing the sky is a complex balancing act. As air traffic intensity continues to grow, the industry requires new ways to maintain efficiency while reconciling the often-competing demands of different airspace users. The HARMONIC and ISLAND projects address this by moving away from rigid flight structures toward a system where airspace can be “reconfigured” on demand.
HARMONIC: Decision support for high-density traffic
The HARMONIC project aims to deliver the decision support, deep integration, and advanced tools needed to maintain airspace efficiency. To deliver on this goal, the project is developing a suite of solutions that enable stakeholders to exchange information essential to achieving more efficient demand and capacity management, as well as better flight planning. During the exercise, HARMONIC partners focused on dynamic mobile areas (DMAs) and their potential to support more efficient balancing in high-density airspace.
ISLAND: Intelligent configuration and resilience
Managing demand for access to the airspace and available capacity is a constant challenge in ATM. During the exercise, ISLAND project partners evaluated this by developing dynamic airspace configuration (DAC) features, exploring how flexible vertical sectorisation can improve capacity distribution and overall network performance. Both solutions were integrated and tested within Indra’s proprietary air traffic flow and capacity management. (ATFCM) tool, iACM, providing high-fidelity insights into operational behaviour.
To ensure the solutions were tested against real-world complexities, the exercise utilised NATS traffic samples and specific use case designs. These were integrated into EUROCONTROL’s INNOVE platform to generate realistic traffic scenarios. The exercise offered valuable feedback from operational experts and strengthened collaboration among all participating teams, advancing the development of these innovative SESAR concepts.
The week concluded with an open day, where participants and stakeholders had the opportunity to explore the different tools in action and review the results of the entire validation. The event highlighted the practical benefits of HARMONIC and ISLAND and demonstrated how these solutions could contribute to a more efficient and flexible European airspace.
Funding acknowledgments: This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). UK participant NATS in HARMONIC and ISLAND receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant numbers 10091990 and 10088428].
