Obstacle Expertise

Obstacle Expertise is CGX AERO's service line for airports, air navigation service providers and civil aviation authorities that must hold accurate terrain and obstacle data under ICAO Annexes 14 and 15. Obstacles that penetrate protection surfaces, or that are published wrongly in the AIP, restrict operations and create safety risks, and urban growth around airports keeps adding new ones.

CGX AERO covers the eTOD (electronic Terrain and Obstacle Data) chain: defining requirements and national eTOD policy, running survey campaigns, validating datasets and publishing them in AIXM 5.1 for re-injection into AIM systems. Source data is chosen per project from satellite imagery (the provider names Pléiades, Pléiades Neo, SPOT and TerraSAR-X), aerial photography, LiDAR and drone surveys, and GPS ground surveys. For ASECNA's pilot at Dakar's new airport, eTOD and AMDB datasets were extracted from 30 cm Pléiades Neo stereo imagery acquired by Airbus, then completed and verified by ground survey. For GISTDA in Thailand, Pléiades, LiDAR and ground-survey data showed obstacle-surface penetrations by roads and buildings that the AIP had declared as not penetrated.

The service also produces Annex 4 obstacle charts with GIS-based tools (including France's first ICAO Type B aerodrome obstacle chart, published for Castres-Mazamet Airport), assesses penetrations of obstacle limitation surfaces and recommends mitigation such as removal, lighting, marking or operational changes, and builds safeguarding maps that show permissible building heights around airports. Monitoring of obstacle changes over a defined area is offered as a subscription.