Airport Planning

Research and Development

Presented to: Airport Safety R&D 

By: Holly Cyrus, Project Manager

Date: September 11, 2013

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 Airport Planning

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  March 10, 2013

Airport Planning (RPD 132)

Contract Funds ($K)

TOTALS:

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 Visual Guidance/Runway Incursion Reduction R&D

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 Airport Planning

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  March 20, 2013

FAA’s Airport and Airspace Simulation Model Enhancements

Engine Version 
        - Version 3.9 was released in                September  2012 with 19 additional enhancements.
        - Version 4.0 was released in March 2013 with 30 additional enhancements.
        - Version 4.1 will be released the end of September 2013 with about 27-29 additional enhancements.

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 Airport Planning

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  March 20, 2013

FAA’s Airport and Airspace Simulation Model Enhancements

Engine Version  4.0 will be released the end of March 2013 with about 28-30  enhancements. 

Summary:
        - Major deicing upgrade
        - Simulating multiple flight levels on one node-link level
        - Miscellaneous bug fixes

Engine Version 4.1 will be released the end of September 2013 with 	about  27-29 enhancements.

Summary:
        - Dynamic taxiing enhancements; dynamic gate re-evaluation
        - New PDARS output format for animation software
        - Airspace movement & blocking enhancements
        - New output tables to validate runway occupancy data and airspace separations
        - Improved gate logic for efficient gate use
        - Various bug fixes

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 Airport Planning

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  March 20, 2013

FAA’s Airport and Airspace Simulation Model Enhancements

The FAA’s Airport & Airspace Simulation Model is being used by Landrum & Brown for San Francisco and Denver airports.  The objectives of these studies:
        - SFO: Analyzing various scenarios to limit delay during runway construction
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        - DEN: Simulating deicing improvements

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 Airport Planning

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  March 20, 2013

Subcommittee on Airport Planning

Finding (7): The Runway Exit Design Interactive Model (REDIM) is used  by airports for sitting high-speed runway exits and was developed by Virginia Institute of Technology with FAA and NASA support in the 1990s.  This model has not been updated since it was originally produced and does not include realistic aircraft exit speeds as it excludes most of the aircraft in the current commercial fleet relies on performance data from older aircraft.

Recommendation:  The Subcommittee recommends that a new research project be initiated to update the REDIM model or create a new one for determining optimal exit taxiway locations to minimize runway occupancy time.

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 Airport Planning

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  March 20, 2013

Subcommittee on Airport Planning

Response:  Yes a new research project has been initiated to analyze runway occupancy times.  A precursor to developing a model was to analyze available data on runway occupancy times.  The approach looked at ASDE-X data that was available for 35 airports.  This was a large amount of data (12 months per airport) to reduce and analyze, so two airports were looked at closely:  DEN and DFW.  Programs were written to convert the raw ASDE-X data into a usable form.  There are limitations to processing the data due to the hardware requirements.

Next Steps:  The analysis process has been automated and streamlined and can be applied to the remaining 33 airports.  Then development of a model. 

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 Airport Planning

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  March 20, 2013

Questions or Comments?

Holly.Cyrus@faa.gov,  Visual Guidance Engineer

Jennifer.Morris@faa.gov, Manager, Capacity Analysis

Office of Performance Analysis and Strategy

Andrew.Lamb@faa.gov, Software Engineer

John.Zinna@faa.gov,  Software Engineer

FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center

Airport Safety Technology R&D Section

ANG-261, Building 296

Atlantic City International Airport, NJ  08405