Miquel Angel Piera Eroles

Airport Logistics Operations

In recent years, air traffic has increased dramatically while airport capacity has remained stagnant. This has resulted in congestion problems which degrade the performance of the air traffic control system and cause excessive costs. Despite recent technological advances in the airport airside area, some procedures and operational rules in the landside area are years behind airside capability. In this chapter, a discrete-event system view of airport operations is introduced. The main aspects of delay propagation due to a lack of coordination policies will be illustrated using an Arena© simulation model.

Flexible Manufacturing Systems

New transport and production resources support high flexibility, resulting in a wide range of options in the planning stage. By increasing flexibility, not only are the number of the decision variables and their domain increased, but the system cause–effect time relationships are as well, which complicates the decision-making activities. In fact, flexibility can lead to benefits but can also lead to idle/oversaturated resources and earliness/tardiness in the final product. The difference between obtaining benefits or losses may depend on the decision-making activity. In this chapter, a discrete-event system modelling methodology to tackle flexibility in present production industries by means of simulation techniques is introduced. The main aspects of the proposed approach using Arena© are applied to remove non-productive operations in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS).

The Yantai Urban Economic Development Assessment Simulator

Economic development simulation is an important component of policy crafting. The possibility of testing potential solutions and selecting the most applicable is the basis of successful development. The article deals with the Yantai Urban Economic Development Assessment simulator, which is based on a multi agent-based (ABM/MAS) simulation model that is comprised of the resource consumption function minimization algorithm. The aim of the simulation is to rank industries in conformity with resource consumption, influence on the environment and income paid into the budget of the city. The simulator allows the administration of the city to elaborate justified decisions about the promotion of successful enterprises and the closing unsatisfactory ones.

Multi-level Architecture on Web Services Based Policy Domain Use Cases Simulator

The FP7 FUPOL project aims at a completely new approach to traditional policy modeling providing complex domain use case verification with the FUPOL Simulator and visualisation of the results in a form suitable for beneficiaries. Policy domain use case models are diverse and versatile, therefore architecture of the simulator must fit complexity and usability requirements that determine involving heterogeneous agent-based and system dynamics simulation technologies and an appropriate implementation comprising on SOA based distributed models joined by Easy Communication Environment (ECE). The article deals with designing the FUPOL Simulator architecture, and the benefits, and drawbacks of the approach used.

Causal analysis of aircraft turnaround time for process reliability evaluation and disruptions’ identification

ABSTRACTIn this study, a causal analysis of the airport turnaround processes is presented, which is a key factor to enhance the air traffic management reliability. Cause–effect relationship analysis demands for a knowledge representation technique that considers the stochastic, dynamic and synchronous nature of the turnaround process, and allows representing both the structure and the different ways in which the sub-processes can be influenced. In this work an exhaustive timed evaluation of the different perturbations that can affect the turnaround time due to precedence task interdependencies is presented. This analysis is used to illustrate the complexity of the turnaround process at operational level (e.g. dynamic critical paths) and to provide a comprehensive turnaround behaviour analysis by taking advantage of causal methods and simulation models as a useful tool to improve turnaround reliability by a better understanding of the impact of induced delays on the full turnaround process.ABSTRACT In this study, a causal analysis of the airport turnaround processes is presented, which is a key factor to enhance the air traffic management reliability. Cause–effect relationship analysis demands for a knowledge representation technique that considers the stochastic, dynamic and synchronous nature of the turnaround process, and allows representing both the structure and the different ways in which the sub-processes can be influenced. In this work an exhaustive timed evaluation of the different perturbations that can affect the turnaround time due to precedence task interdependencies is presented. This analysis is used to illustrate the complexity of the turnaround process at operational level (e.g. dynamic critical paths) and to provide a comprehensive turnaround behaviour analysis by taking advantage of causal methods and simulation models as a useful tool to improve turnaround reliability by a better understanding of the impact of induced delays on the full turnaround process.