Title: Metron Aviation
1- Metron Aviation
- CE Overview for
- TFM Research Board
- Mark Klopfenstein
- Oct, 16 2008
2Metron Aviation CE Projects
Airspace Congestion Management
3Concept SEVEN
- System Enhancements for Versatile
- Electronic Negotiation
- Continued concept refinement through HITLs
- Developing phase implementation plan
- Developing functional and system requirements
- Moving forward towards operational prototypes
that could support potential field trials
Single Line FCA
Polygon SUA
Multiple Line FCA
4Airspace Congestion Management Research
- Initial research to feed additional white papers
on new TFM concepts - Additional/expanded applications of AFP
- FCA airspace capacity estimation
Apply filters
Conceptual DST for setting AFP rates
Bad wx days
All days
Customized FCA
CIWS forecast
Click drag
FCAA08
Historical flow rate (sector triplet usage)
Suggested range for FCA rate based on filters and
location
5Airspace Optimization
- Current Focus leverage NetFM technology to
develop practical DST application(s) - NetFM status
- Completed full-scale, NAS-wide Dynamic NetFM
- Optimizes the scheduling and routing of a day of
flights - Cells represent one node at one time step
- Time steps represent the average travel time for
an aircraft to cross a hex cell - Ground and airborne delays modeled by connecting
nodes in successive time steps. - Completed algorithms for defining NetFM
initialization files - Filed demand
- Airborne demand
- Airspace capacity
- Completed flow disaggregator for defining optimal
departure times and routes for each flight
6NetFM Next Steps
- Continue progress towards operational prototype
- Testing and validation with multiple real
scenarios - Explore scalability
- Smaller time steps
- More markets
- Arc filtering
- Weather Integration Feed capacity prediction
results into NetFM - Develop methods for mapping hex routes to
existing route structure - Develop and apply metrics for comparing NetFM
solutions to other TFM strategies - How much better is the NetFM solution
- Explore approaches for TMI auto-suggest
7Reroute Impact Assessment
- Working with Volpe on historical analysis aimed
at identifying best way to model reroutes that
are not uniquely defined - Prototyping map-based route builder that will
allow FAA and customers to quickly easily
generate good routes - Explore concepts for graphically creating
reroutes - Point-and-click and snap-to nearest fix, NAVAID,
or NRS waypoint - Piecing together existing segments
- Algorithmically identify pre-coordinated reroutes
that best approximate user drawn waypoints - Develop rules for defining a good or flyable
route
8Route Builder
9Route Builder (2)
10Constructing Good Routes
11Departure Flow Management
DFM is a web-based capability that automates the
APREQ release process
- How it works (high-level)
- The ARTCC TMC creates FEAs using a TSD to define
the flows they need to monitor - The ARTCC TMC enters restrictions on the flows
using the DFM web application - DFM queries TFMS for the FEA flight list and
entry times - DFM identifies all gaps in the restricted flow
and presents a timeline for the TMC to monitor - When a pilot calls for taxi, the ATCT looks for
the flight on their DFM web application - If the flight is restricted, DFM shows all of the
available release times for the flight - The ATCT selects the desired release time
- DFM assigns the flight to the first available
release time at or after the desired time and
sends this information to the ARTCC TMC - Current focus
- Harden v1.4 of DFM prototype for field operations
- Support long-term field evaluations at 3-6
Centers beginning in March 2009
Center Browser Display
Tower Browser Display
12Excessive Surface Delays
- Irregular operations often lead to long (hours)
delays between pushback and takeoff - Heart of problem leading to Customer Bill of
Rights - Conducting analysis to better understand
conditions that lead to such delays
13TFM Surface Data Initiative (TSDI)
- Documented airport adaptation process used in
current surface movement event extraction (SMEE)
and transitioned to Volpe - Supporting Volpe with rolling out TSDI to
additional airports
14Airport Congestion Management Research
- Control by Time of Arrival (CbTA)
- Developing concept of operations
- Benefits assessment
- Develop execute proof-of-concept operational
demonstration - Plan for national deployment
- Working with Volpe to develop Unified GDP concept
of operations - Initial research to feed additional white papers
15Integrated Program Modeling (IPM)
- Prototype component in FSM that allows for
- Multiple program modeling
- Ability to compare the results of multiple
scenarios (sets of GDPs/AFPs/Ground Stops) - Aggregation of delay statistics of multiple
programs - Designed to help validate traffic managers
decisions to implement sets of programs - Produces real-time feedback to traffic managers
about program effects on other monitored NAS
resources - Prototype currently being evaluated in field
trials at ATCSCC
Delay Results Panel
Series of IPM Bar graphs with scenario-based
arrival flow rates
16System Integrated TMIs
- Continued analysis into the interaction between
TMIs when layered together - Continued CE on IPM concepts
- Additional displays for flight-level impacts
- Extend modeling to sector-level
- CE support to development for IPM execution
- Develop initial concept for NAS-wide EDCT
programs - Develop TFM war game capability
17Domain Integration Research
- Analyze SUA information and its current usage
- Develop conops for Integrated Airport Capacity
Model (IACM) - Support the development of Integrated Departure
Arrival Capability (IDAC) conops and requirements - Initial research to feed additional white papers
18Integrated Airport Capacity Model Overview
- Integrates weather forecast data with published
weather-dependent airport capacities - Uses statistical methods to compute a
probabilistic airport capacity forecast - Forecast provides 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile
airport arrival capacities based on RUC ceiling
and visibility forecasts
RUC Ceiling/Visibility forecast
Probability of actual wx based on forecast
Capacity as a function of probable actual wx
Display range in capacity out to 8 hours
19Incorporating Terminal Airspace Capacity
20Operations Analysis
- Analysis of current TFM operations with a focus
on - Identifying trends
- Defining and exploring current problems
- Generating strategies for incorporating analysis
results into operations - Includes analyst support on-site at ATCSCC
- Includes support for CDM workgroups (FCT, FET,
GDPE)
21Operations Analysis Topics
- Recently Completed
- AFP Operations and Benefits 2008 SWAP Season
- AFP Operations and Benefits Winter 2007/2008
(Mexican AFPs) - Las Vegas GAAP GDP Equity
- Layered TMIs
- AFPs to Manage New York Metro Departure Demand
- In Progress
- AFPs to Control TRACON Arrival Demand (C90 PCT)
- AFPs to Manage New York Metro Arrival Demand
- Metrics to Determine Maximum Daily AFP/GDPs
- Potential Future
- Integrated Collaborative Rerouting (ICR)
Operations - Potential Impacts of 24x7 GDPs at Often-Congested
Airports - Impacts of including additional Canadian
departure airports in EDCT programs - Effects of issuing GDPs earlier on day of use
- Effects of 2008 Q4 airline schedule reductions
22Performance Metrics
- Developed a suite of metrics that describe the
performance of many aspects of the NAS - Long-term goal measure how TFM affects the
performance of the NAS - For a given TFM enhancement, or investment, what
effect would it have on NAS performance? - Current focus
- Maintain metrics website and compute 2009 values
for existing suite of metrics add new metrics as
needed - Compile data for, and update periodically, a TFM
Factbook illustrating the impact of TFM
activities on civil aviation in the U.S. - Continue to develop passenger-based metrics to
illustrate impact of TFM activities on passenger
trip time - Interpret long-term trends and investigate days
having extreme values for each metric - Research ways to align our metrics with NextGen
Operational Improvements
23TFM Factbook
- Facts about TFM and the NAS
- of flights per year
- Statistics on flight delays
- Top airports, air carriers and traffic/delay
statistics - Passenger impact
- New analysis compares a GDP to what might have
happened had the GDP not been run - Assumes airborne holding in lieu of GDP
- Fewer delay minutes, but higher total cost and
less safe - Also computes fuel saved by GDPs
- Total benefit 1 billion per year
not validated thoroughly yet!
24CE Infrastructure
- Data Management
- Collect, process, store, and maintain data need
to support TFM concept engineering activities - Improve data quality
- Integrated Simulation Environment (ISE)
- Performance improvements to handle up to NextGen
predicted traffic levels - Historic NAS element definition database
- Demonstrate Time Based Metering simulation
capabilities
25White Papers
- Surface Congestion Fuel Burn Reduction
- Identify and analyze future concepts to reduce
surface congestion and thereby reduce fuel burn.
Examples include virtual queues,
slow-roll/managed taxi speeds, etc - Dynamic Allocation of NAS Resources
- "Dynamic Airspace Configuration is likely to be a
key part of the future NAS. This project will
explore operational concepts for partitioning
portions of airspace for specialized temporary
use to demonstrate what is achievable using
todays tools. An example is to use existing
FEA/FCA capabilities to define temporary
exclusion zones around arrival routes as a means
to monitor, schedule, and coordinate Continuous
Descent Arrival (CDA) operations - Pre-day of Operations TFM concepts
- Explore and evaluate concepts for conducting TFM
activities before the day of operations using
predominately airline schedule and/or historical
data
26White Papers
- Environmental Modeling Analysis of TFM
performance (fuel burn estimation) - Develop (using, e.g., POET-R and NASEIM) methods
to compute fuel burn for individual flights.
Conduct pilot study of impact on fuel burn of
various TFM actions. First step toward having a
fuel burn analysis capability that might be
incorporated into decision support tools. - ESP Delay Estimation
- Apply automation developed to support DFM to the
ESP delay prediction problem, to assess the best
approach to and potential value of automatically
forecasting these delays in aggregate - Surface Data Usage
- Continue the CE that was started under the TSDI
project to develop concepts for increased use of
surface surveillance data including better
departure time predictions, improved awareness of
surface operations, and greater insight into
gridlock identification, prediction, and
prevention
27White Papers
- NextGen of FSM slot assignment logic
- Current FSM slot assignment algorithms date from
the 1990s and only partially accomplished their
goals of efficiency, equity, predictability and
control. This effort will examine alternative
approaches such as Lagrangian relaxation to
rewrite FSM algorithms to be more flexible and
better able to achieve TFM objectives - SUA Information Research
- Develop concepts to increase the utilization of
SUA for commercial aviation. One such idea is to
adapt the SEVEN concept to the special case of
SUA utilization to electronically communicate the
requirements of the military for SUA and to
quickly make use of the airspace when the
military doesn't need it. - Additional AFP Capability Usage
- AFPs were designed specifically as a replacement
for GDPs in support of SWAP however, additional
applications such as AFPs for Mexican MIT have
also been adapted. This work will further
explore and develop additional applications of
AFPs to improve TFM.
28White Papers
- Departure Information Services
- Continued CE on the concepts and functionality
developed by the DFM workgroup including
departure fix balancing and using DFM departure
controls to increase constrained airspace
throughput. New capabilities could potentially go
into the current DFM prototype or the WP2 IDAC
capability. - Airspace Capacity Estimation
- One of the biggest challenges with AFPs or other
airspace TMIs is knowing the capacity of the
region of airspace when it is impacted by
weather. This work will seek to apply to growing
body of research into airspace capacity
estimation to develop near-term decision support
capabilities. - Airborne Delay Research
- Apply existing algorithms for measuring where
airborne delays occur to develop an Airspace
Congestion Predictor (ACP) that would provides
metrics for measuring existing airspace
congestion, the capability to predict future
airborne delays and congestion, and provide
metrics for comparing candidate TFM strategies