Some Air Traffic Coordinators in the operational ATC facilities today have information overload from too many tools. On the other hand, some Coordinators (particularly Supervisors) have very few tools at their disposal to support planning and decision-making. There is currently no tool available for FAA traffic managers which allows them to model the affect of a comprehensive combination of TMIs, let alone provide suggestions for the best set of TMIs to fit the anticipated system constraints. TMIs tend to be issued independently of each other, with no ability to model the interaction between restrictions. The TFM community would greatly benefit by a planner designed to suggest a set of actions and initiatives from the TFM Toolbox that would best meet the anticipated capacity constraints, minimizing delay and maximizing the utilization of the available resources.
The Air Traffic Course of Action Planner system developed in Phase 2 can augment NASA's suite of ATM modeling applications. It can be integrated with FACET, allowing task plans, including TMIs suggested by the system, to be played out in simulations in FACET. The system can also aid NASA researchers in understanding the interactions between actions of different ATC facilities, and the interactions between FAA actions and Flight Operator actions. This capability will allow NASA to remain at the forefront of ATM research and will provide relevant and valuable research results to guide the NextGen evolution.
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