Operational Enhancement of Airspace Capacity: Management of Synergies of Spatiotemporal Interdependencies between Airspace Sectors (AirST-Frame)
PROYECTOS DE GENERACIÓN DE CONOCIMIENTO 2023
MODALIDAD: INVESTIGACIÓN ORIENTADA TIPO COORDINADO
Subárea: Transporte
Referencia: PID2023-150782OB-C21
Área: Energía y transporte
The growing air traffic demand and the lack of airspace capacity poses a significant challenge for a sustainable air transport system and to Air Traffic Control and Flow Management (ATCFM). Short Term ATFCM Measures (STAM) tackle the existing inefficiencies arising from spatially fragmented airspace, however, the fast pace time-variant dynamic characteristics of traffic demand during the execution phase cannot be counterbalanced by the rigidity (technical, staff or set-up time requirements) of low pace airspace capacity mechanisms diming the possibility to implement efficient and effective “capacity-on-demand” measures where and when they are needed.
Some initiatives such as Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC) and Dynamic Airspace Sectorization (DAS) could facilitate improved collaborative demand-capacity management mechanisms, but the data discrepancies between planned trajectories at tactical level and real-time data of airborne aircraft caused by different sources of uncertainties, still cause ATC task load unbalances between well identified overloaded sectors with adjacent underloaded sectors. Several recent reports highlight the urgent need of an adaptation of the conventional sectorized air traffic control with new procedures to lessen air traffic controllers (ATCos) workload (WL) on overloaded sectors, supporting also new strategies to manage future air traffic volumes.
AirST-Frame aims to define a framework that extends pre-tactical and tactical ATFCM – ATC measures with an efficient and effective mechanism to balance WL among adjacent sectors. It will implement a time-stamp perishable mobile area among sectors, with the objective to avoid the unnecessary regulations on the traffic demand on the day of operation. AirST-Frame will benefit from spare airspace capacity inherent to present fragmented management of sectors, through digital integrated network management and ATC planning enhanced with an ATCo WL balancing instrument. AirST-Frame mechanism will be designed benefitting of Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligent techniques in predicting unbalanced WL among adjacent sectors and in supporting the final clustering of flights to different sectors on the basis of complexity traffic indicators.
AirST-Frame is a pre-STAM mechanism with “capacity-on-demand” measures at operational level, that will pave the way to new management of the airspace capacity considering the constant increment on traffic demand by extending the pairwise adjacent-sector balancing mechanism to longer adjacent-sector chains. The impact of the research is straightforward since it makes effective all the benefits at operational level coming from the ATM Data Service Providers (ADSPs) and Virtual Centres (VCs).
The AirST-Frame concept encompasses several key components: i) the design of a Clusterized Aircraft Early Handover mechanism (CAEHO) through an analysis of spatiotemporal dependencies within airspace sectors, ii) the formulation of processes for characterizing candidate aircraft, iii) quantifying the potential increase in airspace capacity, iv) establishing criteria for planned traffic based on sectorization, and v) defining limits for aircraft transfer, taking into account system complexity and predicted regulations.