Researchers are developing an airport operations system which
they say could improve the customer experience at airports and cut
carbon emissions.
They say co-ordinating and computerising four key areas of
airport operations could reduce delays, by making each isolated
area work in conjunction with the others.
The aim is to computerise and co-ordinate four areas: scheduling
of take-off; scheduling of landing; gate assignment and baggage
handling.
Researchers, led by a team at the University of Nottingham, aim
to produce a prototype search engine that analyses the billions of
possible scheduling combinations. This will provide advice to air
traffic controllers, who would use it to decide where in the
airport to send planes.
Scheduling decisions are currently made manually by skilled
staff using observations, reports and their experience. Each
activity is run separately, increasing the likelihood that
difficulties in one area will affect another. This leads to delays
snowballing, a situation customers are likely to be all too
familiar with.
The researchers hope the system will not just improve customer
service, but save thousands of pounds a year on aviation fuel. The
system should minimise the time planes are on the ground with
engines running, cutting pollution and costs.
Researchers from four universities - Nottingham, Loughborough,
Liverpool and Salford - are working on the project, which is being
funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC). Staff at Manchester and Zurich airports are providing
advice from a user point of view.
At first, the research will focus on building systems for each
of the four activities, before working out how to run them
altogether.
Principal investigator on the project and dean of the faculty of
science at the University of Nottingham, Professor Edmund Burke,
says the limitations of the current systems are widely
acknowledged. He says, "Many people in the industry recognise that
automating just one of these aspects could improve the efficient
running of airport operations, so integrating all four would be a
huge step forward.
"We'll be developing a computer system that will work its way
through the many billions of permutations created daily in each of
these operations, to provide a much higher level of computer-aided
decision support than is currently available."