Description

Canadian Airspace is the region of airspace above the surface of the Earth that falls within a region roughly defined as either Canadian land mass, the Canadian Arctic or the Canadian archipelago, as well as areas of the high seas. It is bounded by Air Defence Identification Zones (ADIZ) which are shared with the USA.

• Canadian Airspace is broadly divided into two areas: Northern Domestic Airspace (NDA) and Southern Domestic Airspace (SDA) which is further divided into seven zones for the purpose of implementing ESCAT (Emergency Security Control of Air Traffic).

• Within the two major airspace areas there are four types of airspace: controlled, uncontrolled, special use, and other airspace.

• Controlled airspace is a generic term that covers the different classifications of each designated by a letter (Class A through Class G).
  
  

  Credit: Image courtesy of Federal Aviation Administration.

• A flight information region (FIR) is a specified region of airspace in which a flight Information service and an alerting service (ALRS) are provided.

Originator

1. Nav Canada

Use Cases

Source(s)

Remarks

1. GIS compatible format file is unavailable for Canada Airspace from NavCan.

2. Preprocessing is required to extract information from NavCan Canadian Designated Airspace Handbook (CDAH) by parsing text and output to Tim-Newport Pearce (TNP) FreeAir format (textual file). It is a semi-automated process and requires manual validation and correction.

3. Alternatively, the output can be in AIXM format which is more complicated and requires a more complex workflow.

4. EGIS Data Folder: \\ncras382\Application Source Files\EGIS\Smartmap Files\

Process for EGIS integration

CDAH Data Extraction:

1. CDAH Data Extraction is not a foolproof process and requires manual validation.

2. Export CDAH PDF document to XML 1.0 format.

3. In FME, read the XML file as Text file and parse each line of text to extract the following Airspace attributes for output to TNP format.
   a) Section
   b) Title
   c) Type
   d) Class
   e) Base Elevation
   f) Top Elevation
   g) Coordinate Description
   Sample Input:
   <Para_numbering>3.1.1-6
   <Airspace>B9</Airspace>
   <Airspace_desc>N50°27'10.02"W120°32'02.52"Guchy, BC Intxn \ to</Airspace_desc>
   <Airspace_desc>N50°41'01.00"W120°20'07.00"Kamloops, BC NDB</Airspace_desc>
   </Para_numbering>
   Sample Output:
   SECTION=3.1.1-6
   TITLE=B9 [TA]
   TYPE=AIRWAYS
   CLASS=E
   BASE=700ALT
   TOPS=2200ALT
   POINT=N502710 W1203203
   POINT=N504101 W1202007

4. Manually review and validate the output against original document, fix any error encountered.

5. Convert TNP to TAB format using an online public domain GIS Converter: MyGeoData Converter .

6. In FME, export the TAB file to KML, SHP or GDB as required.

7. Import into EGIS.

TC Smart Maps:

1. Not all GIS applications can consume KML file directly due to its unique data structures such as networklinks, folders, models etc.

2. Please contact Lawrence Chong, Digital Services Directorate for TC Smart Maps KML dataset and format translation.

3. TC Smart Maps KML link: \tc.gc.ca\tcgis\GISData\Google Mashup\Aerodrome\Airspace\3D_Airspace-Canada.kmz

Customization:

1. Schema transformation: As required

2. Denormalization: Not required

3. Value coding: Not required

4. Attribute renaming: As required to improve readability

5. Attribute removal: No required.

6. Geoenrichment: Feature symbolization and 3D extrusion is recommended to improve visualization.

7. Format translation: As required

8. Language translation: French version not available