Sebastian Schier

Performance evaluation of the approaches and algorithms using Hamburg Airport operations

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been independently developing and testing their own concepts and tools for airport surface traffic management. Although these concepts and tools have been tested individually for European and US airports, they have never been compared or analyzed side-by-side. This paper presents the collaborative research devoted to the evaluation and analysis of two different surface management concepts. Hamburg Airport was used as a common test bed airport for the study. First, two independent simulations using the same traffic scenario were conducted: one by the DLR team using the Controller Assistance for Departure Optimization (CADEO) and the Taxi Routing for Aircraft: Creation and Controlling (TRACC) in a real-time simulation environment, and one by the NASA team based on the Spot and Runway Departure Advisor (SARDA) in a fast-time simulation environment. A set of common performance metrics was defined. The simulation results showed that both approaches produced operational benefits in efficiency, such as reducing taxi times, while maintaining runway throughput. Both approaches generated the gate pushback schedule to meet the runway schedule, such that the runway utilization was maximized. The conflict-free taxi guidance by TRACC helped avoid taxi conflicts and reduced taxiing stops, but the taxi benefit needed be assessed together with runway throughput to analyze the overall performance objective.

Serious Gaming in Airport Management: Transformation from a Validation Tool to a Learning Environment

Traditional methods to model airport management for e.g. research or training are primarily simulations. These methods lack the ability to model social behavior in collaborative decision making. Serious gaming is an approach to fill this gap. Therefore, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) introduced the serious game D-CITE for research purpose. This paper describes its advancement to a training tool and the results of a first training session with different airport stakeholders. Their feedback emphasizes the importance of a strong communication culture.

Design and Evaluation of User Interfaces for an Airport Management Simulation

This paper describes how we designed and evaluated user interfaces for the human in the loop ACDM simulation. We will show how our requirement analysis was conducted. Firstly, stakeholder roles and process descriptions of airport management were generalized to fundamental information and actions. Generic functionalities were then derived for the user interfaces. To achieve a realistic look and feel, operational tools of major airport stakeholder were analyzed; published information as well as photos and reports of Air Traffic Operation Centers in Europe by DLR staff were analyzed. These were distilled into a requirement list, followed by the design process. The design process combined the operational lookalike with the defined generic actions to a user interface.

Assessing Operational Validity of Remote Tower Control in High-fidelity Tower Simulation

Abstract This paper describes a high-fidelity simulation study with twelve tower controllers within the context of the Remote Airport Traffic Control Center (RAiCe) project. Main objective was the assessment of the operational validity of remote control of one smaller airport with a high resolution video panorama system and an experimental workplace to present these video data, called RTO (Remote Tower Operation)-Console. Furthermore the information acquisition process of the controllers whilst controlling air traffic was analyzed. The central question for developing a remote workplace is: Which information does an air traffic controller need to make safe and efficient decisions while controlling an airport remotely? Until now there is no conclusive evidence which visual information tower controllers receive from their view outside the tower to control air traffic. Nevertheless for smaller airfields with little sensor technology the view outside certainly is one of the most important and comprehensive sources of information. Three variations of the workplace were varied experimentally: first a conventional 200° tower simulator, second the RTO-Console, and third the RTO-Console with additional augmentation of information on the video panorama. Objective eye tracking data were gathered during the simulations runs, together with subjective questionnaire data and interviews. Dwell times for the main information sources were determined to scrutinize the information acquisition process of the tower controller. Altogether, air traffic controllers characterize the RTO-Console as a valid work place for smaller airport. Furthermore, the eye tracking data showed that superimposition of callsigns into the video panorama reduces the head-down time onto the RADAR display.

Remote Tower Simulation Environment

Remote tower operation (RTO) research faces a lot of challenges. Working processes of the tower controllers need to be revised just as well as working place design and regulations. In accordance to this great bandwidth of design and adaption works, a development and validation platform is of substantial need. Among the validation tools recommended by the European Operational Concept Validation Methodology (E-OCVM), simulations play a crucial role. Within the present chapter, three aspects of simulation experiments are presented and discussed which are specific for RTO research: (1) the different usage of scenarios in fast- and real-time simulation tools, (2) new and specific requirements for RTO simulations, and (3) development of the specific resilient simulation setups for RTO research as driving force, with emphasis on the redesign of human-in-the-loop simulations.