Performance Based ATM Design

All research in ATM today are directed towards a performanced based design. Developing a methodology for performance assessement has become paramount for the future ATM design. Another apsect to this is setting up a common platform that holds a unified set of indicators that can be used across board by all interested stakeholder. General indicators for higher level assessments and specific indicators customised to operational stakeholders will be a step to ensure a continous assessment of the ATM system.

An approach being investigated to align indicators with interest and heirachy in the ATM system (SESAR project as our initial focus) is by using classification methods to optimise performance metrics. Supporting poster presentation present at ATACCS 2012 conference can be found in the ACM digital library: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2325697

Project Summary

Introduction:

The ATM system in Europe can conceptually be divided into several layers with decreasing look ahead time; strategic flow & capacity management, complexity and trajectory management, tactical separation management and collision avoidance.

The Complexity and Trajectory manager is one of the inherent goals of the related SESAR project, but its foreseen functions and support tools are limited even when taking into account the SESAR story board step 3. If we remove this limitation, the Complexity and Trajectory manager will have a primary role in the ATM in order to increase the overall efficiency of the air traffic management system.

The proposed research will examine the roles, services and tools required by the highly automated complexity and trajectory manager systems. The implementation of the complexity and trajectory management layer in the execution phase with the longest look-ahead time- will support a shift from today’s methods of controlling aircraft along fixed route structures towards a fully dynamic management of aircraft trajectories.

The assumption behind the proposed research activities, is that higher levels of automation than those described in SESAR can be reached using new, innovative support tools for situational awareness assessment (what-if tools), trajectory management and clearance coordination. These support tools will ease the fast implementation of trajectory changes that meet trajectory objectives that are outside the sector controller’s geographic and temporal field of view, without compromising the effectiveness of sector operations.

The implementation of the Functional Airspace Block (FAB) planning layer will present the environment for C&T manager to execute this delicate, advanced and necessary role. Identifying the services and assigning roles will be a necessary step to ensure the C&T manager operates and cooperation efficiently with the other planning layers. 

Objective:

This Research work is pursued as a requirement for the award of a PhD degree in Aerospace Engineering. The work that is described here mainly aims at evaluating the implementation of high levels of automation of decision action selection for “complexity & trajectory Manager” systems