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Abstract—This paper presents the implementation and performance? How could a DMP be used to manage such
application of a prototype What-if Analysis decision support tool forecast TMIs? How could other traffic management initiatives
for airport traffic planning. The What-if Analysis tool is used to complement the DMP? What should the DMP parameters be?
predict airport traffic performance during a future time horizon DMP parameters can include categories of aircraft, target
with forecast operating conditions and to design Departure queue lengths and queue length thresholds, capacity allocations
Management Programs to mitigate the negative impacts of and time periods of application. Airport traffic management
predicted demand/capacity imbalances. Application scenarios decisions are especially complex if categorical DMPs (e.g.
include dynamic weather imposing ground hold and/or Miles-In- departures to particular fixes) are needed, or if different airport
Trial restrictions on airport departures. We demonstrate the use
departure queues need to be managed differently.
of the prototype for a historical traffic and weather scenario at
Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT). Future work This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
includes enhancing the capabilities and user interfaces of the tool, role and potential integration of what-if analysis into airport
and researching methods to predict future traffic management arrival, departure and surface traffic management. Section III
initiatives from forecast weather and traffic conditions. presents implementation of a prototype what-if analysis tool.
Section IV presents results of using the prototype for airport
Keywords—departure management programs; integrated traffic analysis and DMP design analysis with historical traffic
airport arrival, departure and surface operations; airport traffic
and weather scenarios at Charlotte Douglas International
modeling; airport traffic performance
Airport (CLT). Sections V presents future work, and Section
VI presents conclusions.
I. INTRODUCTION
The FAA Surface Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) II. OVERVIEW
Concept of Operations calls for managing departing aircraft to
This section summarizes the FAA CDM Concept of
balance airport surface traffic levels with both airport and
Operations, the NASA ATD-2 concept of operations, how
airspace capacity [1]. The NASA Airspace Technology
what-if analysis integrates with these concepts, and scenarios
Demonstration (ATD)-2 concept calls for traffic management
for what-if analysis.
technologies and operations to enable departing aircraft to
absorb delay at the gate, taxi unimpeded on the airport surface,
spend minimum time in the departure runway queue, and climb A. Role of What-if Analysis in Airport DMP Planning
continuously to cruise altitude [2][3][4]. The FAA Surface CDM Concept of Operations [1] calls for
DMPs to meter the entries of departing aircraft into the
A what-if analysis tool supports these goals by enabling airport’s movement area to balance traffic levels with both
airport traffic managers to predict airport departure, arrival and airport and airspace capacity. A Departure Reservoir
surface traffic over a time horizon of forecast operating Coordinator (DRC) is responsible for planning, monitoring and
conditions, identify time periods when traffic demand is revising DMPs. The DRC performs what-if analysis to predict
estimated to exceed capacity, and specify Departure time periods of demand-capacity imbalance and to specify
Management Programs (DMPs) to mitigate the negative effects DMPs to mitigate their negative effects. The NASA Airspace
of the predicted demand-capacity imbalance. What-if analysis Technology Demonstration (ATD)-2 concept calls for
is particularly important for planning DMPs during periods of technologies and operations for integrated planning and
dynamic convective weather. What-if analysis enables the management of airport arrival, departure and surface traffic. A
traffic managers to address important questions such as: How goal is to enable departures to absorb delay at the gate, taxi
will anticipated Traffic Management Initiatives (TMIs), such unimpeded on the airport surface, spend minimum time in the
as Miles-In-Trail (MIT) restrictions, impact airport traffic
C. Illustrative Example
Fig. 1. Integration of What-if Analysis with Airport Departure Management. As an example, we consider the impact of an actual
weather scenario at CLT shown in Fig. 2. For brevity, we only
address the impact on north-, east- and south-bound departures
via runway 18L after the storm has passed over the airport. At
4:45PM local time, the weather closed the airport and
continued to move east. Scheduled departures from runway
18L were delayed during the departure stop from 4:45PM to
5:15PM, and were impacted for another hour as the storm
moved across the departure fixes of the east gate.
We identified multiple weather days of interest for CLT in 2) DMP Design Analysis
August 2014, corresponding to convective weather at CLT or We used the prototype tool to perform DMP design
proximate facilities, resulting in significant restrictions on analysis. While numerous other DMP types and parameters
departures, including MIT restrictions, Calls For Release may be specified, for example multiple coincident categorical
(CFRs), and Expected Departure Clearance Times (EDCTs). DMPs for all departures to different fixes and/or runways, we
For this demonstration, we considered traffic restrictions for implemented a single DMP for all departures. Automated
August 18, 2014, where heavy rainfall near CLT resulted in analysis of the predicted queue lengths proposed the DMP start
MIT restrictions that impacted 180 departures, CFRs that at 3:00 PM, before the runway 18L queue exceeded the TDQL
impacted 41 departures, and EDCTs that impacted 2 of 3 aircraft, and end at 7:00 PM, after the runway 18C queue
departures. During the period from 2:08 PM to 5:58 PM, local drops below the TDQL. Our analyses of other periods at CLT
time, the restrictions comprised 15 MIT for departures via the of significant departure push and departure restrictions
MERIL fix from 2:28 PM to 5:10 PM. This impacted 40 of the determined that initiating the DMP prior to the restrictions
159 departures in this time period. Of the 40 departures, 36 avoids queue buildup and enables consistent and efficient
departed runway 18L, and 4 departed runway 18C. traffic performance throughout the time period of restricted
traffic flow. Results with the DMP are depicted in Fig. 6.
B. Results
The prototype what-if analysis tool was used for airport
demand analysis and DMP design analysis for the specified
conditions at CLT. Results are presented in this section.
1) Airport Demand Analysis
The prototype tool was used to perform airport demand
analysis for the 4-hour period of scheduled departures under
the prescribed departure restrictions. The airport traffic state at
the start of the prediction period did not account for prior
traffic; in practice the prediction should initiate from the
current or estimated traffic state. Analysis of scheduled
pushbacks identified quarter-hour time periods where their
quantities exceeded airport departure capacity. Predictions of
airport traffic movement estimated the departure queue lengths
for runways 18L and 18C would exceed 3 aircraft, reaching 11
and 12 aircraft respectively, and average quarter-hour taxi-out
times would peak in excess of 30 minutes. Throughput would Fig. 6. DMP design analysis proposed departure throughout, runway queue
saturate at the prescribed 30 operations per hour. Results are length, taxi-out time and gate delay by runway.
depicted in Fig. 5.
The results show that, with the DMP, throughput saturates Regarding tool enhancements, Fig. 7 depicts a notional
at the prescribed 30 operations per hour (7-8 operations per interface for modeling forecast TMIs, planning DMPs and
quarter-hour). For runway 18L, the departure queue length evaluating the impact on airport departure and arrival traffic
comes close to the TDQL of 3 aircraft, peaking at 4 aircraft, performance for baseline (B) and alternative (A1) operating
and average quarter-hour taxi-out times reduce to 15 minutes. plans.
The reduced taxi-out delay is shifted to gate departure delay,
which reaches 10 minutes for runway 18L departures, and
almost 12 minutes for runway 18C departures.
For runway 18C, however, the queue length is predicted to
reach 7 aircraft and average taxi-out time reaches 25 minutes.
This is because runway 18C is shared with arrivals, and
arrivals land to runway 18C in the subject time period. To
account for the shared runway use, the DRC could reduce the
departure rate of the DMP for runway 18C to release fewer
departures to runway 18C.
What-if analysis predicted the changes in aggregate
performance of airport departure traffic as a result of
implementing the DMP listed in TABLE I.
No 20 14 4 18.6 0.0 This depicts the example scenario of weather passing over
18C
Yes 20 10 3 16.3 3.0 CLT, calling for a departure ground stop on runway 18L
ending at 2115 ZULU, and 30MIT for departures via fixes
MERIL and LILLS, from 2115 to 2215. The departure queue
What-if analysis also predicted the changes in aggregate lengths are predicted to exceed 16 aircraft in the 15-minute
performance of airport arrival traffic as a result of the DMP. time periods from 2115 to 2230. The DMP reduces the
Average arrival throughput for runways 18R, 23 and 18C were predicted queue lengths to 16 aircraft, within the thresholds of
predicted to remain at 20 aircraft, 17 aircraft and 7 aircraft, +20/+10 aircraft. Queue length, off-out and off delay metrics
respectively. ON-to-IN times for arrivals from runways 18R, indicate significant improvement in airport traffic performance
23 and 18C were predicted to increase by 1.6 minutes, 1.0 under the alternative. Situational awareness is enhanced with a
minutes and 2.1 minutes, respectively, if departures were held planview display of the traffic color-coded by applicable
at their gates during the DMP and gate assignments for arrivals restriction, depicted in Fig. 8.
were maintained.
V. FUTURE WORK
Future work for what-if analysis includes developing
methods for estimating traffic management initiatives from
forecast weather, developing and enhancing what-if analysis
tool prototypes with improved traffic prediction capabilities
and DMP planning features, and further exploring what-if
analysis operations including stakeholder collaboration in
situational assessment and DMP planning.
Regarding conditions forecasting, proactive designs and
implementations of DMPs will have to be developed based on
forecasts of traffic management initiatives. Methods are needed
to estimate traffic flow management restrictions and other
conditions from weather forecasts as input to the what-if
analysis, and to use what-if analysis to design DMPs to
accommodate those forecasts and their uncertainties.
which could impact airport traffic performance. Airport traffic
modeling should capture surface characteristics which impact
traffic flow and timing, including arrival and departure runway
and route resources, arrival-departure interaction points, traffic
control points and delay reservoirs while enabling rapid
evaluation. DMP emulation requires DMP parameter
configuration, algorithms for TMAT computation, and
modeling of traffic control as per the TMATs. Interfaces for
specifying airport conditions, traffic demand and traffic
restrictions are useful for exploring and assessing the impact of
possible deviations from current or anticipated operating
conditions, and designing responses to mitigate their effects.
Algorithms for recommending DMP parameters, and
accounting for the uncertainty in forecast data and parameters,
can significantly enhance the decision support of the what-if
analysis tool.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank Savita Verma and Yoon Jung of NASA Ames
Research Center for their support in conducting this work.
Fig. 8. Notional interface for what-if analysis tool for situational awarenesss
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