SOFTWARE
Left: A rule-based holding
management mode
simulation produced by
Transoft’s AirTOP software
Right: A rule-based gateto
gate simulation can be
used to provide insight into
airport capacity
instrument departure (SID), holding stacks,
standard instrument arrival (STAR) and
transition vectoring can be easily created and
edited and the essential static or dynamic
(rule-based) restrictions associated to these
objects are supported, including speed/
course/altitude restrictions along SIDs,
STARs, manoeuvring areas on approach,
rule-based departure/arrival separations, and
wake turbulence separations. Actual track
trajectory records can be imported from
various file formats, and integrated filter
functionality allows to derive transition
vectoring areas with their typical speed and
altitude restrictions, whether these are
published or not.
The rule-based runway dependencies
concept in the module lets users consider all
of the constraints imposed on the arrivals
and departures of one runway by those on
another. These constraints includes the
synchronization of departures and arrivals
on crossed or parallel runways and the
arrival of staggered mode operations.
Separations can be made for any pair of
runways. Simulated controller tasks (tower,
departure, pick-up, feeder) use all static or
dynamic restrictions and provide realistic
departure and approach sequencing. Rulebased
circuit/touch and go, as well as rulebased
missed approaches, are supported.
Besides the two- or three-dimensional
playback with satellite imagery or custom
charts in the background, the module
provides reports of controller workload. In
general, workload is estimated dynamically
and can be customized for TMA/TRACON
and airport/tower controllers. The workload
model can associate work duration to any
event, such as TMA entries, for instance.
Airport simulation
The simulation of the aircraft movements
and associated parking and other processes is
taken care of by the Airside Aircraft module.
It supports the rule-based modelling of
parking/gate allocation, push/pull
procedures, Taxibot/E-Tax operations, taxi
flow control, runway entry/exit selection,
single/multiple runway sequencing, runway
crossing, turn-around management, de-icing
procedures, ground metering and DMAN,
dynamic runway direction change, amongst
others. The Airside Vehicle module takes
care of providing simulations for specific
vehicle-related analyses, for example the
assessment of service-road bottlenecks
that could jeopardize the timely servicing
of aircraft.
The Runway Capacity Analyzer module
does not require extensive modelling and
works with an isolated runway model
including entries/exits and a simplified
airspace component. It applies advanced
data-analysis techniques to evaluate current
or future capacity of the runway system,
obtain optimized traffic sequences, or study
the impact of fleet mixes, Level of Service
(accepted delay), preferential flight treatment
or other parameters.
The What If AnalyZer
WIZer (What-If AnalyZer) for area control
centres (ACCs) is a module that uses the
AirTOP fast-time simulation engine to
produce detailed, up-to-the-minute forecasts
68 AIR TRAFFIC TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 2020
of air traffic demand, traffic complexity, and
controller workload. These forecasts can be
used to provide decision support to
supervisors and FMPs/Traffic Manager
(Flow Management Position), by providing
warnings when the entry count, occupancy,
or workload/complexity of a sector is
forecast to exceed some user-defined
threshold. The tool offers further decision
support by proposing ATFCM measures to
balance demand and capacity and allows the
user to produce “what-if ” scenarios which
present the results of such proposed
measures by the system or by the user.
WIZer takes in input data in the form of
flight progress messages, radar tracks, wind
and storm forecasts, the current sector
opening scheme and the current activated
scenarios or regulation. The forecasts are
displayed to the user in a graphical interface
that highlights periods during which the
demand is forecast to exceed capacity. The
tool provides options to either reduce
demand or increase capacity and displays the
results of executing such measures on the
updated forecast, allowing the user to
perform interactive what-if analyses of the
available options.
WIZer has been developed in close
collaboration with DFS, Deutsche
Flugsicherung GmbH, and the first
operational installation of the tool was
deployed in the Munich ACC in 2018. It is
currently being rolled out to other ACCs in
Germany, whilst several other ANSPs have
discovered the operational advantages of
WIZer and are following DFS in
implementing the tool. v
Fast-time simulation is and will continue to be one of
the most cost-eective technologies for analysing
and communicating airport capacity plans and
airspace redesign