Passenger-centric airport management via new modelling technique for simulating passengers

Abstract

Processes at airports are streamlined to deliver optimal performance at planning stage. Disturbances make it necessary to provide the possibility to adjust processes on-the-fly. Accurate adjustment requires collecting passenger data for forecasting the passenger demand at service points. Simulations are a cost-efficient way to perform planning and forecasting. In this paper we present a new approach for simulating passengers covering a broad range of applications. With the help of this approach it is possible to simulate the whole journey of a passenger, from landside processes at the airport of origin through processes at a hub airport to baggage claim at the destination airport. Based on such simulations, airports can minimize their Minimum Connecting Times, and airlines can optimize their performance according to a chain of airports, e.g. hub and spoke airports Airports can also evaluate their intermodal connections to the airport, such as train connections, to reveal bottlenecks. In this paper we examine the possibility of substituting the microscopic model of touch points with an appropriate network model. Areas needing a high level of attentiveness, such as service points, are modeled with a microscopic model, whereas areas without the need for higher attentiveness, such as connections between gates, are modeled with a network model. We use the boarding score as an indicator to measure the quality of the substitution.