SCANNING THE ISSUE Scanning the Issue: Special Issue on Aviation Information Systems BY JASON RIFE, Member IEEE Guest Editor CLAIRE TOMLIN, Member IEEE Guest Editor PER ENGE, Member IEEE Guest Editor I. PREFACE Much like bandwidth in the electromagnetic spectrum, the capacity of the worldwide airspace is a finite resource. Rising demands for air transport incentivize efficient exploitation of this airspace Bbandwidth.[ As frequent travelers, we know too well the frus- trations caused by flight delays that strand us at the gate or leave us circling above an airport. These travel delays are not merely a nuisance. Delays cascade through the air transportation system and cost businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity and fuel. In this era of global warming, excess fuel burn and associated greenhouse gas emissions exact a toll on the environ- ment as well as on the bottom line. Given predicted continuing growth in demand for air cargo and passenger transport, disruptive technologies are urgently needed to reduce air traffic delays and increase capacity. Fortunately, large-scale efforts to reenvision the air transport infrastructure are under way. Take a glance at proposed plans for the modernized air transport infrastructure, and you will find that aviation information systems will play a central role in the coming revolution. In the United States, for example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NASA, Department of Transportation, Department of Defense, and other government agencies are coordinating under the umbrella of the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) to construct the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). NextGen will exploit novel informa- tion system technologies to maximize our use of the airspace. In particular, NextGen seeks to increase air traffic capacity while maintaining extraordi- narily high levels of safety. A novel aviation information infrastructure will maintain the workload for human air traffic controllers, without increas- ing their number, and enhance system flexibility to support the entry of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) into the national airspace. Internationally, the aviation re- search community is just beginning its journey to innovate and coordinate new solutions for air traffic manage- ment. This Special Issue on Aviation Information Systems is timely in that it provides an in-depth view of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. It is heartening to know that we have talented researchers tackling these challenges, as is demonstrated by the 13 excellent papers that com- pose this volume. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JPROC.2008.2006041 This special issue focuses on three significant technologies for restructuring air traffic management: bounded-error navigation, aviation communications networks, and automated algorithms to increase air traffic capacity. 1898 Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 96, No. 12, December 2008 0018-9219/$25.00 Ó2008 IEEE