Improving Airport Capacity by Adaptive Ground Traffic Management

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Improving Airport Capacity by Adaptive Ground
Traffic Management

• Dragos STOICA
• Marc De COLIGNY
• Félix MORA-CAMINO

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Presentation Plan

• The framework for airport ground traffic
  management
• Adaptive ground traffic management system
• Conclusions and further research

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Presentation Plan

• The framework for airport ground traffic
  management
• Adaptive ground traffic management system
• Conclusions and further research

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The framework

• Objective improving airport capacity by
  adaptive ground traffic management
• The operational framework
• The airport platform
• The airport ground traffic operational rules
• The agents
• The airport authorities and the ground traffic
  controllers
• The airlines and the pilots

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The operational framework

• The existing systems
• Signalling systems
• Localisation systems
• Communication systems
• Ground traffic control systems

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The ground traffic control system

• The aircraft flow and information exchanged with
  the ground traffic control system

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The ground traffic control system

• The organization of an airport control tower

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The operational framework

• Ground traffic control systems
• SMGCS (Surface Movement Guidance and Control
  System)
• A-SMGCS (Advanced-SMGCS)
• The main functions of A-SMGCS
• Surveillance
• Routing
• Guidance
• Control

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The airport capacity

• Capacity definition
• Theoretical capacity
• Potential capacity(observed)
• Practical capacity(mean delays)
• Operational capacity(max delays)
• Airport capacity evaluation models
• Theoretical models based on queues networks
  (macroscopic)
• Simulation based models (microscopic)
• Optimisation based models (flow models)

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A
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The airport capacity

• Theoretical capacity the maximum number of
  aircraft that the airport platform may service
  per time unit without taking into account the
  QOS.
• Potential capacity the maximum number of
  aircraft that the airport platform may service
  per time unit with a predefined demand levels.
• Practical capacity the maximum number of
  aircraft that the airport platform may service
  per time unit with a predefined level for the
  average delay.
• Operational capacity the maximum number of
  aircraft that the airport platform may service
  per time unit with a predefined level maximum
  delay.

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The aircraft ground traffic management

• Decision elements
• Arrivals management
• Choice of landing runway (G0)
• Choice of parking position (G1)
• Choice of the taxi path between runway and
  parking position (G2)
• Guidance and control of the aircraft between the
  runway exit and parking position (C1)

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The aircraft ground traffic management

• Decision elements
• Departures management
• Choice of take-off runway (G3)
• Choice of the push-back instant (G4)
• Choice of taxi path between the parking position
  and the runway (G5)
• Guidance and control of the aircraft between the
  parking position and the runway entry (C2)

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Presentation Plan

• The framework for airport ground traffic
  management
• Adaptive ground traffic management system
• Conclusions and further research

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Contributions

• At strategic planning level
• The evaluation of operational airport capacity
  taking into account the airport ground traffic
• At tactical level
• An adaptive approach for airport ground traffic
  management

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Taking into account the airport ground traffic

• The airport capacity evaluation is extended to
  the entire platform
• Taking into account the number N0 of grounded
  aircraft in the airport system

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A global approach for airport capacity evaluation

• The main hypothesis of the model
• Traffic flows are assimilated to continuous flows
• The levels of offer (open runways and taxiways)
  and demand levels (planned arrival and departure
  rates) remain constant during the considered time
  interval
• Taking explicitly into account ground traffic
  interaction at crossings
• Storage capacities are associated to the taxiway
  system

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A global approach for airport capacity evaluation

• Main drawbacks of the capacity study
• Planning issues
• Runway system redimensioning
• Taxiway system redimensioning
• Parking zones redimensioning
• Airport terminals redesign
• Operations issues
• Airport circulation plan
• Dimensioning of ground traffic control zones
• Parking zones allocation

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A global approach for airport capacity evaluation

• Operational capacity evaluation
• The algorithm

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A global approach for airport capacity evaluation

• Exploitation of the operational capacity
  evaluation
• A basis for tactical planning
• A means for evaluation of different ground
  traffic management strategies and procedures

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A global approach for airport capacity evaluation

• Exploitation of the operational capacity
  evaluation
• The resulting circulation plan for Toulouse
  Blagnac airport

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Contributions

• At strategic planning level
• Evaluation of airport airside capacity and ground
  traffic strategic planning
• At tactical level
• Adaptive approach for airport ground traffic
  management

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The ground traffic management

• Analysis
• Limitations of existing approaches
• Mainly mono criteria approaches uniformly applied
  to all aircraft
• Effect of queues not fully taken into account
• Taxiway capacity not considered, only traffic
  flow conservation considered
• Saturation phenomena not considered and all
  aircraft supposed to move at constant speed
• Perturbations associated to the distributions of
  operations times at parking positions and the
  dispersion of touch-down and runway exit times,
  not considered

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The ground traffic management

• Analysis
• Tactical considerations for a fluid ground
  traffic flow
• The arriving aircraft should have priority The
  aircraft at parking positions have to be cleared
  as soon as possible if they have the possibility
  to reach the take-off runway with small taxi
  delays
• The capacity of runways used for both landings
  and take-offs is maximised when uninterrupted
  sequences of departing aircraft and arriving
  aircraft are built up
• During peak hours, queues built up at taxiways
  crossings and at runways entries
• The number of effective taxi paths used by the
  ground traffic controllers is relatively small

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The ground traffic management

• Analysis
• Exploitation of results issued from capacity
  studies
• The comparison with operational capacity levels
  allows the evaluation of the current traffic
  saturation degree.
• The optimal distribution of traffic flows
  resulting from the operational capacity study
  allows the identification of candidate paths and
  the estimation of the related travel costs.
• For the existing airport network, statistical
  data allows to assign expected delays to the
  different potential paths.

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The ground traffic management

• Proposition
• Objective Minimize the aircraft ground movement
  delays
• Optimization criteria The estimated total delay
  over a given time window
• Optimization means Choice of aircraft paths for
  both arrivals and departures
• Approach Adaptive with a sliding optimization
  horizon

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The ground traffic management

• Definitions
• Route a path 2D on the graph associated to the
  airport infrastructure
• Itinerary for departures a pair (2D T)
  consisting of a route and the time instant when
  the roll-out begins.
• Itinerary for arrivals a pair (2DT) consisting
  of a route and the times instant of runway exit.

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The ground traffic management

• The support of all possible routes for an
  aircraft constitutes a mesh of routes.
• Defining a mesh of routes An oriented graph
  without circuits between an unique origin and an
  unique destination

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The ground traffic management

• The strategic choice for the routes
• The criteria
• Selection criteria
• The routes are classified by
• Length
• Generalised cost
• Degree of freedom

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The ground traffic management

• The evaluation of costs corresponding to a route
• The considered temporal structure
• The considered queues

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The ground traffic management

• Queue management
• The GFA-E problem
• The criteria
• The decision variables and the constraints

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The ground traffic management

• Operational approach and itinerary definition
• The operational temporal structure

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The ground traffic management

• Operational approach and itinerary definition
• Relax the problem GFA-E by considering continuous
  decision variables ? GFA-C
• Solution algorithm for GFA-C
• Solve GFA-C by a Continuous Linear Programming
  algorithm, denote by the solution
• There are several possibilities
• If is already an optimal solution, consider
  it at t0K?T
• If is integer, consider it at t0K?T
• If
  adopt it
• If it is not ?close to an integer feasible
  solution, back track the simplex solutions until
  a solution ?close to an integer solution is found

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The ground traffic management

• Operation approach and itinerary definition
• Processing system for ground traffic management

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The ground traffic management

• The mesh of routes (Toulouse-Blagnac)
• Arrivals

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The ground traffic management

• Mesh of routes (Toulouse-Blagnac)
• Departures

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The ground traffic management

• Traffic management (Toulouse-Blagnac)
• Departures

D7
D3
D4
D5
D6
A1
D2
D1
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Presentation Plan

• The framework for airport ground traffic
  management
• Adaptive ground traffic management system
• Conclusions and further research

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Conclusions and further research

• Contributions
• Development of a global approach for analysis and
  management of airport ground traffic by the means
  of airport operational capacity
• Introducing a third dimension in the airport
  capacity concept
• Development of adaptive approach for aircraft
  routing that is compatible with the actual
  operational constraints and with the expected
  performances for future airport ground traffic
  management systems

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Conclusions and further research

• Further research
• Integrating air terminal ground space in the
  airport capacity evaluation
• Evaluation and calibration of the model for
  several airports
• Detailed tuning using specific scenarios for
  ground traffic management and comparative studies
  with other methods performing equivalent functions

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Conclusions and further research

• Perspectives
• Use of advanced optimization methods (global
  optimisation methods, evolutionary optimisation
  methods) to solve the ground traffic management
  related optimization problems.
• Automatization of ground traffic conflict
  resolution.

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Improving Airport Capacity by Adaptive Ground
Traffic Management

• Thank you for your attention !
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• Dragos STOICA, Marc DE COLIGNY, Félix MORA-CAMINO