Europe features a few highly mountainous areas only, with a number of airports located in valleys, hence exposing inbound and outbound traffic to CFIT risk. The ISAS concept under development within the project will offer a critical safety improvement for airlines flying to these airports, but also when they fly to other non-European destinations where CFIt may be considered a concern.

From the industrial point of view, European companies are fairly advanced although they have harsh competition from US companies. It is of strategic importance to reduce US dominance by fair competition and to develop and to promote innovative and alternate solutions in order to raise the market share of European companies and allow them to take advantage of the foreseen increase of air traffic. The preceding project ISAWARE was successful in providing Europe with the knowledge that was missing on surveillance equipment on-board of aircraft. It enabled European partners to investigate the integration aspects of multiple sensors and provided the main axes of research in order to fulfil the end user requirements. Based on that work performed, the follow-on project ISAWAREII will bring critical technologies to the involved partners (see project/objectives) . ISAWAREII innovations should be available on the market in about four years time after the end of the project, so before 2010. The advanced technologies shall strengthen the avionics suppliers (Diehl Avionik Systeme, BAE Systems, Skysoft Portugal and THALES AVIONICS) position on the cockpit related equipment and provide Airbus and Eurocopter with an European solution for integrated on-board surveillance systems. Furthermore, NLR and TUD will improve their knowlegde and expertise in this area to be able to properly support the avionics industry via flight simulation, and new HMI (i.e. display) technics and on flight operational matters.