The FAA is considering Dynamic Airspace as a potential component of NextGen. However, it is clear that decision support tools will be required to facilitate evaluation of such dynamic airspace designs. As we have found in our DAC research, the required computational performance to algorithmically design and evaluate airspace sectors is significant. The results of this research could be applied by the FAA in a decision support tool for DAC. Modeling and simulation of Air Traffic Management operations is computationally intensive. However, the availability of real-time ATM modeling could be applied to numerous decision-making situations by both the FAA and by Flight Operators. Currently, the level of detailed modeling required to achieve beneficial and useful recommendations from such models in prohibitive. However, the results of this research may provide the necessary computational speed to overcome this obstacle and create the opportunity for commercial real-time ATM modeling and simulation tools.
The most likely Phase III activities involve further development of the SectorFlow software and algorithms to support NASA's continued aeronautics mission. The SectorFlow DAC algorithms have been analyzed by NASA in comparison to other DAC concepts, and SectorFlow's performance was found to be high. NASA would benefit from the ability to continue to conduct DAC research using a variety of DAC approaches, including the use of Dynamic Density as an objective function as has been implemented in SectorFlow. The application of massively parallel computing can also be applied by NASA to numerous aeronautics and Air Traffic Management algorithms and analysis efforts. This increase in computational power may allow the necessary increase in modeling samples required to generate robust decision support tool recommendations using a stochastic optimization approach.
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