Vertical Flight Obstacle Data Analysis

Advent Health Heliport, DeLand, Florida Russ Gorman from the Airport Emerging Technologies section visited the Advent Health facility in DeLand, Florida, on July 13-17, 2026, in support of the Vertical Flight Data Standards project. This facility is one of six heliport sites chosen due to the abundance and uniqueness of obstacle data that will be used to support Airport Technology Research & Development (ATR) research. The goal of this project is to investigate cost-effective, practical ways to address gaps in the collection and maintenance of obstacle data that may present risks for lower-flying vertical flight aircraft, including helicopters and Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicles. The project team members also performed an analysis to identify gaps in the information collected and stored versus the full set of data required by vertical flight aircraft. This gap analysis led to the development of a prototype schema design to enable the storage of the complete set of information required by vertical flight aircraft in the Airport Data and Information Portal (ADIP).

This trip focused on conducting surveys to collect obstacle information at the hospital heliport location and within the surrounding neighborhoods. The survey data will be analyzed and compared to publicly available third-party data, such as from Google Earth and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The prototype ADIP schema will also be validated during this analysis phase to ensure that the design is complete and that all data can be saved and retrieved correctly. If more data can be leveraged from third-party sources versus having to manually collect all the required data, then costs will be reduced and the data will be more readily available and maintained more easily, resulting in a richer set of up-to-date obstacle data.

Russ Gorman | ANG-E263