Agent-Based Distributed Planning and Coordination for Resilient Airport Surface Movement Operations

Abstract

Airport surface movement operations are complex systems that experience many types of adverse events which require resilient, safe and efficient responses. One regularly occurring adverse event is that of runway reconfigurations. Agent based distributed planning and coordination has shown promising results in controlling and maintaining operations in complex systems, especially during disturbances. In contrast to the centralised approaches currently used by air traffic controllers, distributed planning is performed by several agents, which coordinate plans with each other. This research evaluates the contribution of agent-based distributed planning and coordination to the resilience of airport surface movement operations when runway reconfigurations occur. A Multi-Agent System (MAS) model was created based on the layout and airport surface movement operations of Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. Within the MAS model, three distributed planning and coordination mechanisms were incorporated, based on the Conflict-Based Search (CBS) Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) algorithm and adaptive highways. MAS simulations were run based on eight days of real-world operational data from Schiphol Airport. The MAS results show that the distributed planning and coordination mechanisms were effective in contributing to the resilient behaviour of the airport surface movement operations, closely following the real-world behaviour, and sometimes even surpassing it. In particular, the mechanisms were found to contribute to more resilient behaviour than the real-world when considering the taxi time after runway reconfiguration events. Finally, the highway included distributed planning and coordination mechanisms contributed to the most resilient behaviour of the airport surface movement operations.