Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
NAS Element Closure Planner
Project Description
We propose a NAS Element Closure Planner, wherein the tool may be used to plan airspace closures and/or combined airport surface and airspace closures in advance, in addition to the exclusive airport surface closures. The proposed technology applies concepts from statistical modeling and machine learning to reliably predict likely future evolution of airport traffic as well as the evolution of other influencing factors such as runway capacity over time. A machine learning tool will drive multiple what-if analysis simulations, each with a slightly modified “initial condition” which may be defined by flight simulation start times (i.e., gate pushback times) as well as allocated taxi routes. Multiple simulations, each driven by one set of initial conditions will be run for each closure time-window option being investigated. Thereby, for each closure time-window option, we will obtain not just one but a distribution of performance metrics, which is a more realistic estimate of likely performance as opposed to a single point value. This ability to reliably predict future performance and the uncertainty associated with it, is a significant step up from the predictive analytics that are available today to airport airside operations staff. The technology would also be applied to determine the multiple futures of closing airspace for any variety of common reasons that would include a commercial space launch use case.
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Anticipated Benefits
NECP, by extending its planning domain to cover closures of airspace regions, provides a capability that will be beneficial to the new NASA programs that address the management of new types of air traffic (e.g., UASs, Commercial Space Operations (CSO), Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations). Gaining predictive insight to unregulated airspace and relationships to currently regulated airspace that a UAS/CSO/UAM vehicle routing may transit is not currently afforded by any platform. NECP is relevant to the NASA ATM Technology Demonstration-2 (ATD-2) subproject in which NASA plans to address current-day surface traffic management shortfalls by demonstrating Integrated Arrival, Departure, Surface (IADS) scheduling technologies and transitioning them for field-implementation. NASA's ATD-2 technologies are expected to become critical parts of the FAA's NextGen Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) capability, deploying surface traffic management solutions at NAS Air Traffic Control Towers (ATCTs). At winter weather impacted airports, the deployed TFDM/ATD-2 technologies will benefit from our proposed NECP DST to improve decision-making during runway closures. NASA's AORG is gaining a better understanding of winter storm effects on NAS operations (especially airports) and developing knowledge and tools to reduce cancelations and delays. Our innovation has been included within the FACT program and supports these capabilities by enabling improved decision-making during runway closures.
Direct FAA-related post Phase II applications for NECP include: (1) an analysis tool focused on the assessment of airport construction impacts, (2) a Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO) benefits analysis tool, (3) a platform to support collaborative airline-ANSP decision making around adverse weather based airspace closures, (4) a UAS airspace impact analysis tool, and (5) a Commercial Space Launch impact analysis tool set. ATAC is in active discussions with potential FAA customers in the FAA NextGen and Air Traffic Organization (ATO) on related support projects. We plan to leverage these contacts to showcase NECP's novel collaborative decision making and analytical capabilities and promote the FAA's adoption of NECP for the above applications. In addition, airlines are often adversely impacted by airport movement area closures and/or airspace closures and the changing nature of the NAS. Integration of increasing numbers of UAS as well as Commercial Space Launches increase the imperative of developing novel and efficient ways of dealing with these disruptions. NECP provides the airlines and/or airports with a reliable data-driven approach to collaboratively plan, analyze, predict, notify, and execute such closures. Each organization can also tailor its NECP platform to additionally provide metrics that measure impact on their own corporate, network-wide operations or business objectives, and then help drive agreement on the solution(s) that best fit stakeholder goals. More »
Direct FAA-related post Phase II applications for NECP include: (1) an analysis tool focused on the assessment of airport construction impacts, (2) a Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO) benefits analysis tool, (3) a platform to support collaborative airline-ANSP decision making around adverse weather based airspace closures, (4) a UAS airspace impact analysis tool, and (5) a Commercial Space Launch impact analysis tool set. ATAC is in active discussions with potential FAA customers in the FAA NextGen and Air Traffic Organization (ATO) on related support projects. We plan to leverage these contacts to showcase NECP's novel collaborative decision making and analytical capabilities and promote the FAA's adoption of NECP for the above applications. In addition, airlines are often adversely impacted by airport movement area closures and/or airspace closures and the changing nature of the NAS. Integration of increasing numbers of UAS as well as Commercial Space Launches increase the imperative of developing novel and efficient ways of dealing with these disruptions. NECP provides the airlines and/or airports with a reliable data-driven approach to collaboratively plan, analyze, predict, notify, and execute such closures. Each organization can also tailor its NECP platform to additionally provide metrics that measure impact on their own corporate, network-wide operations or business objectives, and then help drive agreement on the solution(s) that best fit stakeholder goals. More »
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Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATAC | Lead Organization | Industry | Santa Clara, California |
Ames Research Center
(ARC)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Moffett Field, California |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
California
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