Europe’s next step in Airport Performance Management Research

Kurzfassung

The paper will provide an insight into the next steps of Total Airport Management research as it is being conducted by Europe’s ambitious Single European Sky ATM Research program (SESAR2020) as project PJ.04. SESAR 2020 is planned to be operated in two defined program waves, covering the years 2016-2019 for wave 1 and 2019-2022 in the second wave. The paper will focus on the second of two so called solutions in PJ.04. Solution 2 addresses the delivery of concepts and ultimately industrially developed prototypes for Collaborative Airport Performance Management. The preceding SESAR 1 program focused on developing and validating a number of key elements of the performance-based collaborative airport operations management concept. It centred essentially on the definition and management of the Airport Operations Plan and the description of the collaborative processes associated to the Airport Operations Centre. It became evident, following an in-depth analysis of the SESAR 1 results, that further TAM research and development is required. Three main research topics have been identified: situation and impact assessment, collaborative mitigation and performance management, and the exploitation of available operational airport process data in an intelligent, automated way. Following the European Operational Concept Validation Methodology, solution 2 of the Total Airport Management Project and its newly to be developed concept elements will be passing from the initial idea (V0) to the scoping (V1; 2017) stage, followed by the feasibility assessment (V2; 2018/2019) and finally, in the second wave of the program (2019-2022), to the performance assessment (V3) level. Maturity gate assessments will ensure the proper completeness of the working results, supported by corresponding validation activities, before the work on the next maturity level can be formally started. The key aim of Solution PJ.04-02 is to develop procedures, mechanisms and tools to support stakeholder groups that are cooperatively conducting airport operations, providing enhanced multi-stakeholder decision support especially in adverse conditions, such as bad weather, strikes, or unforeseen events such as runway blockages. The components of solution 2 will address intra-airport and airport-network aspects, highest sophistication levels such as those dealing with environmental performance or automated airport learning environments and optimised utilisation of resources in a demand versus capacity balancing approach. The philosophy of Collaborative Decision Making advocated in SESAR 1 is that of ‘consensus’ building amongst the different airport stakeholders. This consists of each stakeholder assessing the performance impact on their own operations of any constraining situation and performing a dialogue around the potential solution to be implemented. To enable the stakeholders to efficiently assess the implications of various options, adequate support tools need to be developed as well as ensuring that the collaborative procedures to be followed are adapted to the eventual deployment scenario in terms of different airport categories (large hubs and small/medium regional airports). Expected benefits will be part of the scoping phase, together with an estimation of the associated magnitude. The paper will present the results of the V1 activity, the ideas, the resulting concept elements and their defined scopes and the validation roadmap for the next maturity stages. Following the SESAR 1 philosophy in terms of deployment, the results of PJ.04 after completion of wave 2 of the SESAR 2020 program can be subject to mandatory prescription in the ECAC area by the European Commission.