KANSAS CITY, KAN. – The Kansas Department of Transportation Aviation Division unveiled the Kansas Aviation Portal on the campus of Kansas State University-Salina today.
In 2011, KDOT’s Aviation Division released the nation’s first Airspace Awareness Tool, which was designed to increase the awareness of potential obstacles around Kansas airports. The aviation portal builds upon the original airspace tool with expanded capabilities and data layers that show economic impacts, system plans, pavement conditions at airports and 3-D animation.
“I’m proud of the Aviation Division for its continued innovation with Kansas Aviation Portal,” said Transportation Secretary Mike King. “We all use aviation to benefit the Kansas economy more than we know. This portal gives users the chance to increase their knowledge of airspace safety as well as learning about the benefits of Kansas airports.”
Director of Aviation Jesse Romo said the reason for the update was simply to take advantage of improved technology.
“Anything technology based moves so quickly, this gave us a chance to upgrade the Airspace Awareness Tool and make it more spectacular,” Romo said. “Anyone can now learn more about our airports, the role they play in our system and the economic benefits they provide to the community.”
The upgrade to the airspace awareness function includes the ability to test new or proposed structures against the FAA’s notice criteria tool. The tool will color code the proposed obstructions if they require an FAA airspace study.
“It’s the first tool of its kind to put this much aviation data on a single public site while using Google Earth and 3-D animated imagery,” Romo said.
The portal which has been developed over the past year by KDOT and Burns and McDonnell can be found athttp://ksaviationportal.ksdot.org/. Access to the portal may require a browser update.
