Short-range LIDAR

With the continuous development of the airport, the possibility of turbulence arising from buildings near the runway has gained attention. To address this issue, the Observatory developed alerting technology based on the short-range LIDAR (SRL), and installed a unit of SRL (Figure 1) close to the Centre Runway near to AsiaWorld-Expo. With its finer and more frequent scans, the SRL can help capture turbulence features, which are of smaller spatial and temporal scales, induced by buildings nearby. The SRL has commenced operational use since the middle of 2019 as an enhancement of the Observatory’s Windshear and Turbulence Warning System.

In addition, the Observatory installed a unit of SRL at each end of the airport's new North Runway in the middle of 2022, and two units of SRL close to South Runway in early 2024 to support the detection and research of aircraft wake turbulence. In latter part of 2024, three more SRL units were installed onn the airport and its vicinity to enhance the support for the study of building induced turbulence as well as aircraft wake turbulence.

Figure 1 The short-range LIDAR in operation.

Figure 2 The short-range LIDAR located near the south runway.

Figure 3 The short-range LIDAR located near the north runway.