A Coloured Petri Net Model of Cooperative Arrival Planning in Air Traffic Control

Abstract

A Colored Petri Net Model is presented which simulates a potential future arrival planning process in air traffic control. The model is focused on the sequence planning step of the cooperative arrival planning procedure and was built in order to acquire a better understanding on how the behaviour of individual actors (i.e. aircraft) within the cooperation influences the outcome of the overall sequence planning process. A peculiarity of the CP-netfrom a modelling point of view lies in the fact that state space analysis is used repeatedly during each cycle of the planning process to generate and evaluate the potential solutions to the sequence planning problem. The results gained through queries on the state space are then re-fed into the simulation of the next planning cycle. Within the scope of the paper different analysis and visualisation approaches are discussed which can be used to trace the time-dependent system behaviour over one single planning cycle or a number of consecutive cycles. The results of the simulation shall in future be used to build realistic scenarios and assumptions on how different actors will interact with the system from a human factors point of view.