I can’t say for American airports but I have been involved in European air traffic control research and I can say that using algorithms isn’t very very well received by air traffic controllers.
Computers tend to do better than humans in optimal situations, but can also completely fail in other situations. One example is the sun magnetic waves disturbing the radars. For cameras I can think of many things that can fail, rabbits eating the cables, snow of the lense, or the local cloud provider having a downtime.
So because computers can fail and humans are the backup, humans must be always present and have the best situation awareness. And to have the best situation awareness, you can’t let algorithms do the work.
> For cameras I can think of many things that can fail, wabbits eating the cables, snow of the lense, or the local cloud provider having a downtime
If the people in the tower can see the operations, then a camera in the tower can see them, too. Don't need a local cloud provider.
> So because computers can fail and humans are the backup, humans must be always present and have the best situation awareness
Think of the video system as the backup. It's like the system in the car that will hit the breaks automatically if you're about to hit a wall.
BTW, I infer from your post that there STILL are no cameras pointed at the taxiways. Heck, a good chunk of homes have an always-on camera in their doorbell. This is not rocket science, and is not expensive.
Remember when that SST caught fire taking off? No video of it. The accident investigation had to do a lot of investigation to figure out when it caught fire. Because of the lack of a simple, cheap camera like you'd find in convenience store.
P.S. There are plenty of wabbits in my yard. So far, none of them have eaten through the power or phone cables. I must be just lucky :-/
Yea I agree with you. It was perhaps bad examples from me. The thing is when you do a risk analysis, digital systems have more risks than well organised and trains humans with paper and pencils.
Maybe we will eventually bring more automation in this domain.
I can’t say for American airports but I have been involved in European air traffic control research and I can say that using algorithms isn’t very very well received by air traffic controllers.
Computers tend to do better than humans in optimal situations, but can also completely fail in other situations. One example is the sun magnetic waves disturbing the radars. For cameras I can think of many things that can fail, rabbits eating the cables, snow of the lense, or the local cloud provider having a downtime.
So because computers can fail and humans are the backup, humans must be always present and have the best situation awareness. And to have the best situation awareness, you can’t let algorithms do the work.