Decision support framework to assist air traffic management

Abstract

Air traffic management (ATM) initiatives are developed and implemented to mitigate delays caused by uncertainty in weather and demand at an airport. ATM decisions are made by traffic flow management specialists, based on their judgment and experience. Historical data on airport operations can be used to assist decision-making by intelligently augmenting controller experience with a more systematic and complete record of past ATM actions under similar conditions and their consequences. A decision-support tool that finds days similar to a query day with regard to weather features driving capacity can be used to guide day-of-operations decisions and assess past performance. A framework to evaluate different similarity measures is developed based on operational outcomes of the airport.