KAIROS at ECATS2026: Driving Innovation in Aviation Safety & Sustainability

The KAIROS project was out in full force last week in Brussels! We were proud to present two key advancements that demonstrate how AI and advanced satellite data are transforming the future of flight operations.

🛡️ Real-Time Hazard Detection & Forecasting

Hugues Brenot from the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB) presented our work on the integration of the COBRA algorithm with the KAIROS AI system.

• The Innovation: By exploiting the full infrared spectral capabilities of geostationary sensors, COBRA improves the identification of volcanic SO₂, desert dust, and ice crystals.

• The Impact: These high-frequency observations feed directly into the KAIROS AI system, providing near-global, data-driven predictions of plume evolution to support real-time aviation safety decisions.

  
  

☁️ Contrails & Climate Impact

Danial Akbari from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) shared a groundbreaking poster on a new Neural Network Framework (ResMLP) designed for the joint prediction of Ice-Supersaturated Regions (ISSRs) and contrail-induced Radiative Forcing (RF).

• Technical Excellence: Using high-resolution weather data, the framework achieved 90.4% accuracy in ISSR detection.

• Sustainability Goal: This enables a deeper understanding of the spatiotemporal distribution of contrails, a vital step toward mitigating the climate impact of commercial aviation.

  
  

Together, these contributions from our partners at BIRA and UC3M highlight KAIROS’s holistic approach to a safer, greener sky.