25th edition of the ENAIRE Foundation Awards presented
The panel of judges for the ENAIRE Foundation Awards, which this year mark their 25th anniversary, has announced the winners in four categories: Journalism Award, Innovation Award in the Drone sector, Luis Azcárraga Award and José Ramón López Villares Award.
As announced last May, the Photography Award has been postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it impossible to carry out all of the activities and events that were planned.
Journalism Award
Every year, this award recognises works of journalism that are disseminated in the press, radio, television, and on digital and online publications that are related to air transport and navigation, as well as those involving airport facilities and airport services in general. The winner is awarded €12,000.
This year, 18 candidates were presented and the jury decided that the 2020 Journalism Award should be shared between two works that received the same score.
One of the recipients of the award was the report by Ms Pilar Martínez Maldonado published in the Diario SUR newspaper titled “Cien años pasan volando” [A Hundred Years Fly By], where she reviews the hundred-year history of the Málaga Airport. In entertaining style, Pilar Martínez recounts anecdotes and milestones that highlight the importance of this infrastructure, which is the oldest in the AENA network and played a central role in 20th century tourism in Spain.
The jury particularly appreciated the quality of the writing, as well as the illustrations and layout, which were worthy of one of the most important regional newspapers in our country.
The other award was presented to Ms María García Galiacho for her piece titled “Dentro del Centro de Control Aéreo de ENAIRE en Torrejón” [Inside ENAIRE's Air Control Centre in Torrejon], which aired on Televisión Española's La 2 station. This five-minute story provides details on the operation of a Control Centre and, to familiarise viewers with its functions, the journalist interviews, among others, ENAIRE's director of the Centre-North Region, a systems analyst, the system maintenance manager, an operations technician and an air traffic controller.
The jury assessed the quality of the report, the impeccable image and the account of the events portrayed to shine a light on the work done by the staff at an ENAIRE Control Centre.
Innovation Award in the Drone Sector
Presented annually, it recognises those works, studies or projects that make a unique contribution to innovation in the drone sector, in the fields of aircraft design and aircraft system technologies (including propulsion, communications, control, etc.), drone production, operation, and traffic management, as well as the development of new applications. It is valued at 12,000 euros and this year 16 candidates were presented.
The jury noted the quality and high level of many of the projects and unanimously agreed to award this award to the work "Aerotaxi Lauren para transporte unipersonal en entorno urbano" [Lauren Air Taxi for Single-Person Urban Transport], by Mr Íñigo Egizábal del Río from the company TECNALIA.
The jury found the work by Eguizábal del Río on the drone sector in Spain to be highly innovative, as it involves one of the first vertical take-off electric air taxi designs in our country and offers a very interesting platform for dealing with applications in the area of urban air mobility, a field of great potential that is currently in the early stages of development.
It also noted that "this interesting project will be very useful as an aerial platform to test U-space solutions in the field of mobility. This new concept in drone traffic management will be essential to developing numerous solutions and will, through technological empowerment, yield improvements in the quality of life of our citizens and positively impact our economy".
Luis Azcárraga Award
Presented annually, it acknowledges work, studies or projects that offer a major contribution to air transport in terms of planning and organisation, economic and administrative management, environmental impact and protection, as well as technological research and innovation. The winner is awarded €12,000.
This year, 12 nominees were eligible and the award was given to Álvaro Rodríguez Sanz, for his PhD dissertation, which he presented and defended in 2019 at the Technical School of Aeronautical and Space Engineering (ETSIAE), and whose title was: “Gestión de la incertidumbre y optimización del rendimiento en la operativa aeroportuaria empleando técnicas de razonamiento probabilístico y aprendizaje por refuerzo (Uncertainty management and performance optimisation in airport operations using probabilistic reasoning and reinforcement learning techniques)”.
The work was singled out because of the very important contribution made by this thesis to understanding the operational behaviour of an airport as a system. It presents a new probabilistic methodology to deal with uncertainty in airport operations that links arriving flights with departing flights (turn-around stage); it provides information on the interdependencies between factors that affect the performance and characteristics of the airport system; it assesses the operational dynamics of airports and proposes a model to optimise response policies.
Follow-up work from this thesis led to several publications in prestigious journals (the indexed Journal Citation Report), which allowed the knowledge acquired to be disseminated and which will undoubtedly result in advances in research studies in this area in the future.
The thoroughness of the study of airport operations, and specifically of how certain elements influence others, as well as the models it proposes and the findings reported, led the jury to choose this work as the winner of the 2020 Luis Azcarraga prize.
José Ramón López Villares Award
This is an annual prize to reward final bachelor's or master's degree projects related to air navigation or airports in the following disciplines: Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering (especially the branch of Roads, Canals and Ports), and Industrial and Telecommunications Engineering. These projects may be from any Spanish university and be written in any of our official languages or in English; up to four €3,000 awards may be granted.
This year, 19 applications were considered.
In the speciality of air navigation, the award was presented to Damián Rodríguez Fernández for his master's degree project at the Polytechnic University of Madrid titled "Creación de un Mapa en el territorio español de Zonas Montañosas. Criterio de utilización del MOC (margen con el terreno) en Zonas Montañosas” [Creating a Map of Mountainous Areas in Spain. Criteria for Using MOC (Minimum Obstacle Clearance) in Mountainous Areas]. It should be noted that this project received the highest grade.
In the jury's opinion, the overall evaluation of the work is excellent. "This is a very comprehensive project, as it technically deals with cartography, applies ICAO criteria and provides a mathematical basis for the user to apply the criterion"
In the speciality of airports, after analysing and evaluating all the projects eligible for the José Ramón López Villares award that involved airports (7 in total), the jury found none that met the criteria for quality, innovation, search for efficiency and utility in the airport sector. As a result, the jury agreed not to award the prize this year.
The work of the ENAIRE Foundation
The ENAIRE Foundation is a cultural organisation linked to ENAIRE. Its objectives include the fostering of aeronautical culture and the preservation, expansion and spreading of ENAIRE's artistic heritage. This heritage comprises a notable collection of Spanish and Ibero-American art, spanning from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day. It encompasses more than a thousand paintings, sculptures, photographs, graphic art pieces, works on paper and multimedia artworks.
About ENAIRE
ENAIRE is the company of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda that manages air navigation in Spain. It renders aerodrome control services at 21 airports, including the busiest in terms of air traffic, plus en-route and approach control, from five control centres: Barcelona, Madrid, Gran Canaria, Palma and Seville. In addition, ENAIRE provides communications, navigation and surveillance services to 45 air control towers.
In 2019, ENAIRE handled 2.1 million flights to and from four continents (Europe, America, Asia and Africa), transporting 320 million passengers.
ENAIRE is the fourth most important European air navigation service provider, and, in a clear commitment to the Single Sky initiative, belongs to international partnerships such as SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) Joint Undertaking, SESAR Deployment Manager, A6, iTEC, CANSO (Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation) and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization).
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