openSkies - Integration of Aviation Data into the R Ecosystem

• DOI: 10.32614/rj-2021-095
• Publication Date: 2022-02-14T02:03:50Z
• Authors: Rafael Ayala; Daniel Ayala; Lara,Sellés Vidal; David Ruiz
• Keywords: Programming Languages and Compilers; Computer Sciences; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing; 004

Aviation data has become increasingly more accessible to the public thanks to the adoption of technologies such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and Mode S, which provide aircraft information over publicly accessible radio channels. Furthermore, the OpenSky Network provides multiple public resources to access such air traffic data from a large network of ADS-B receivers. Here, we present openSkies, the first R package for processing public air traffic data. The package provides an interface to the OpenSky Network resources, standardized data structures to represent the different entities involved in air traffic data, and functionalities to analyze and visualize such data. Furthermore, the portability of the implemented data structures makes openSkies easily reusable by other packages, therefore laying the foundation of aviation data engineering in R. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2019-105471RB-I00 Junta de Andalucía P18-RT-1060