Lecture: Air Traffic Flow Management in the Presence of Uncertainty
Professor Senay Solak of the Department of Finance and Operations Management will deliver this lecture as part of the Fall 2008 Operations Research / Management Science Seminar series. All are invited to attend.
The title of this lecture is "Air Traffic Flow Management in the Presence of Uncertainty."
Abstract: Demand is or will soon be close to the available capacity in National Airspace System. As a result, small reductions in capacity will lead to significant traffic congestion and delay throughout the U.S. airspace. Convective weather and variations in the times that aircraft are in a given volume of airspace due to uncertainties in their departure times and trajectories can have a significant negative impact on airspace throughput. In fact, convective weather is the major cause of airspace capacity loss. While aircraft will continue to avoid convective weather for the foreseeable future, progress can be made in dealing with the uncertainties inherent in weather predictions. Specifically, it is possible to reduce capacity limitations due to uncertainty as to the location, timing and severity of adverse weather events. In this study, we characterize the effect on throughput of these and all other relevant factors, and develop optimization algorithms for traffic flow management in the presence of uncertainty, particularly uncertainty with regards to weather. To this end, we present a two step approach. In the first step we parameterize the weather and traffic patterns that occur within the U.S. airspace, and then develop a probabilistic model for sector capacity in future time intervals. In the second step, we develop optimization algorithms for single generic sector traffic flow management using stochastic programming and discuss generalizations of these to multiple sectors, where aircraft are dynamically routed in response to the evolving conditions in the sectors.
More information about Professor Senay Solak.
This series is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of Finance and Operations Management, and the John F. Smith Memorial Fund.
