Hartmut Fricke

A discrete microscopic model for pedestrian dynamics to manage emergency situations in airport terminals

Airport terminals have to cope with both safety and security aspects. A terminal is divided into public and non-public areas which have different security levels and require several ways to control passengers (EU 2320/2002). The developed model must consider the mix of screened and unscreened passengers, the ever-changing traffic volume, the use of emerging technologies, and the changes made to legal requirements. Inside the terminal heterogeneous groups of people are located with different personal profiles. The discrete microscopic simulation model for passenger motion behavior presented here is based on an enhanced cellular automata model. This model considers repulsion potentials, friction effects, and path finding/guidance algorithms. To control the evacuation process, the route choice approach can be used to integrate different evacuation strategies. The model reacts fast to changes in the surrounding area and provides multiple simulation runs with an altering parameter set in a short time. To ensure a reliable result a multi-level diagnostic of the evacuation process is necessary for considering the overall evacuation time, the identification of potential bottlenecks, the analysis of the critical path through the airport terminal, guidance system influences on pedestrian dynamics, and the effects of adjusted structural measures.

Passenger Dynamics at Airport Terminal Environment

We report on a specific calibration for an individual-based simulation environment. For this purpose field data of traveling people inside an airport terminal was recorded. The advantage of using video surveillance system is the granting unbiased gathering of person behavior. The presented results are derived from an observed area of 10×30 m area between the check-in facilities and the security control at the Dresden International Airport. By means of statistical analyses a significant difference in behavior between business and leisure related passenger groups was resolved. The influence of carry-on baggage after the check-in procedure is very small and remaining trolley bags do not affect the maximum speed of passengers. In contrast, the size of a passenger group has a significant influence on walking speed, whereas large groups tend to diverge into smaller groups with 2–3 members.

Solving the direction field for discrete agent motion

Models for pedestrian dynamics are often based on microscopic approaches allowing for individual agent navigation. To reach a given destination, the agent has to consider environmental obstacles. We propose a direction field calculated on a regular grid with a Moore neighborhood, where obstacles are represented by occupied cells. Our developed algorithm exactly reproduces the shortest path with regard to the Euclidean metric.

Group Dynamic Behavior and Psychometric Profiles as Substantial Driver for Pedestrian Dynamics

Our current research lays emphasis on the extended pedestrian perception and copes with both the dynamic group behavior and the individual evaluation of situations, and hence, rather focuses on the tactical level of movement behavior. Whereas common movement models primary consider operational aspects (spatial exclusion or distance and direction related repulsion), the consideration of psychophysical concepts and intra-group coordination overcomes the idea of directed repulsion forces and derives specific movement decision with respect to the individual evaluation of situations. To provide a solid basis we analyze both data recorded at a mass event and data from a double-staged evacuation test to derive essential group dynamic behaviors and psychological related decision principles, respectively.

Stochastic transition model for discrete agent movements

We propose a calibrated two-dimensional cellular automaton model to simulate pedestrian motion behavior. It is a vmax= 4 (3) model with exclusion statistics and random shuffled dynamics. The underlying regular grid structure results in a direction-dependent behavior, which has in particular not been considered within previous approaches. We efficiently compensate these grid-caused deficiencies on model level.

Contributions of Advanced Taxi Time Calculation to Airport Operations Efficiency

The current paper stresses the high priority of accurate taxi time calculation and suitable pre-departure management strategies in the context of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (Airport CDM) and contributes to an improved overall understanding of the associated requirements. Based on data analysis performed at Frankfurt Airport this paper compares results of static and advanced taxi time calculation. Contrarily to static calculations, where look-up tables for stand-runway-relations are used, advanced taxi time calculation takes into account the current traffic situation and calculates taxi times dynamically. The paper shows that the taxi time uncertainties when using static data lead to only 42% of flights within the accuracy of ± 2 minutes according to the requirements of the Airport CDM Implementation Manual for short term predictions (maximum 30 minutes before off-block). The application of advanced taxi time calculation leads to significant improvements with 66% of flights within the accuracy of ± 2 minutes at the moment when the aircraft leaves the stand. Hence, app. 50% more predictions are compliant with the Airport CDM requirements compared to static data. Based on these results, the paper assesses the effects of improved taxi time predictability onto airport operation efficiency with particular focus set to taxi time reductions due to minimized queuing at the departure runway. It is shown that advanced taxi time calculation contributes to a reduction of delays, fuel burn, CO2 emissions and costs for airspace users compared to the use of static look-up tables. However, it is also emphasized that the shifting of delays from the runway holding positions to the stand does not necessarily contribute to efficiency improvements. It is recommended that the pre-departure sequencing strategy must be chosen cautiously in dependence on the fuel and time costs for airlines as well the amount of departure delay that has to be absorbed.

Functional Hazard Analysis of Virtual Control Towers

Abstract Current legacy procedures for Aerodrome Control significantly rely on the tower controllers’ direct view on the aircraft resp. the airport. Visual information is known as being of high quality and reliable as long as appropriate weather conditions are given. Though, convective weather conditions heavily impact these procedures often leading to an aerodrome capacity backlog. To gain independency from such weather impacts, providing a synthetic view and substituting the “out-of-the window” vision is currently investigated by TU Dresden. Beside the research team 1 within the project Virtual Control Tower Research Study (VICTOR), the investigations concentrate on the safety assessment of such a technically and procedurally adopted environment. Already existing synthetic vision systems seem to have potential to offer a virtual reality that resolves equally the environment and enhances controller capabilities by various new functions. However, a proof of equivalent safety for such a system design for virtual control towers is crucial for operational implementation and hard to achieve. Such as the Functional Hazard Analysis (according to Eurocontrol Safety Assessment Methodology) was performed as a starting point for such an assessment in order to identify hazards, determine severities of effected consequences and safety objectives of a dedicated virtual tower concept. This paper reports results concerning the identification of hazards and risks when using substituted visual information diversity for aerodrome control procedures. Furthermore, concepts for system design and evaluation are presented.

Streiks und die Zuverlässigkeit der Verkehrsbedienung

ZusammenfassungMit der Privatisierung und der Aufhebung des Prinzips der Tarifeinheit haben die Arbeitskämpfe im Verkehrswesen stark zugenommen. Die Zuverlässigkeit der Verkehrsbedienung ist gefährdet und unbeteiligte Dritte haben oft das Nachsehen. Der Wissenschaftliche Beirat beim Bundesminister für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur hat eine Stellungnahme vorgelegt, die Empfehlungen ausspricht, wie das Streikrecht im Verkehrswesen neu geregelt werden kann.AbstractOf late, Germany has been hit by unprecedented strike actions by airline and railway staff. Lufthansa’s pilots staged 13 walkouts between April 2014 and September 2015, resulting in the cancellation of 8,500 flights and affecting around one million passengers. The one week strike by Lufthansa’s cabin crews in November 2015 forced the company to cancel another 4,700 flights. The trend towards industrial action in the German transportation sector is not limited to airline pilots and cabin crew, however. In addition, security agents and ground staff at several airports have gone on strike, and most of all, train drivers walk out with increasing frequency. In this article, measures are proposed to balance the legal, and legitimate, right of workers to use strikes as a tool of last resort in wagebargaining processes with the no less important right of customers to have access to reliable transportation services. While many other Western countries have regulations in place for the conduct of wage bargaining, including rules on work stoppages in core public service sectors, no such rules exist in Germany.

Performance Evaluation of LiDAR Point Clouds towards Automated FOD Detection on Airport Aprons

Both the current system of airport ground control and the continuous implementation efforts of A-SMGCS and Remote Tower concepts require complete and independent surveillance coverage in real-time. We believe that 3D point clouds generated by an actively scanning LiDAR system available at TU Dresden may satisfy these high standards. Nonetheless, the utilization of LiDAR sensing for airport ground surveillance purposes is extremely challenging due to the unique requirement profile in this domain. This is also the reason why existing solutions in other domains such as autonomous driving and robotics are not directly applicable for airport ground surveillance. In a first step, we developed point cloud object detection and segmentation techniques to present that new data comprehensively to the airport apron controller. In this paper, we focused on the timely detection of dislocated objects (foreign object debris, forgotten equipment etc.) as a serious cause to hazardous situations on airport movement areas. The results are promising for various reference targets. However, the detection of very small objects (e.g. socket wrench) requires more elaborate algorithms to take full advantage of the current LiDAR technology. In the future we will assess the strength of LiDAR-based surveillance in terms of the number of hazardous situations that could be avoided or safely managed by the apron controller.

Modeling aircraft pushback trajectories for safe operations

Pushback operations are safety critical as historic incident and accident data show. The consequences are severe injuries of the ground personnel and expensive aircraft damages. As such, pushback process optimization by means of precise tug/aircraft trajectory prediction is considered as valuable risk mitigation strategy. We present a mathematical model to predict these pushback trajectories under various geometric constellations which is a complex solver activity. Our proposed model relies on a kinematic approach to generate the pushback trajectory as a function of aircraft wheelbase and geometric angles for curved segments. The conclusive concept validation is based on commonly provided ICAO standard planning data and shows promising results which will be subject of further field validation tests.