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Today's National Airspace system (NAS) infrastructure includes more than 30,000 air traffic control (ATC) systems. These infrastructure systems support air traffic operations carried out at air traffic control facilities, air route traffic control centers, airports, and other facilities. Because the number of systems continues to increase faster than the Airway Facilities (AF) workforce that maintains them, it is imperative that the performance of these systems be maintained to preserve the integrity of the NAS infrastructure and thereby avoid delays or disruptions in air traffic.
MITRE/CAASD has been working with the FAA on the notion of a NAS Infrastructure Management System (NIMS)—an enterprise management system using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software.
We define NIMS in terms of three architectural views:
- Computing architecture
- Information architecture
- Data communications architecture
Once integrated, NIMS will support maintenance functions by consolidating activities into a few maintenance management centers. The result is reduced costs related to maintenance functions and a better record for NAS services availability. Together, the NIMS capabilities improve on the NAS infrastructure management operations of today by streamlining, centralizing and automating many functions. Over time, NIMS capabilities are expected to decrease the costs of infrastructure maintenance considerably.
MITRE/CAASD has been involved in the NIMS program for over 10 years, starting with the support to AF strategic planning through the current prototyping activities. MITRE/CAASD's direct contributions include the Integrated Capabilities Schedule (ICS), NOMS Reference Architecture, NIMS System Requirements Document, NIMS Protection File, NIMS Vulnerability Assessment, and the NIMS Concept of Operations. MITRE/CAASD also has provided significant technical input for documents such as the System Level Specification, Evolutionary Description Document, the Interface Control Document for the Simple Network Management Protocol, and the NIM Operations Guidance Document.
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