Real-time airport surface movement planning

Minimizing aircraft emissions

Journal article (2017)

Authors

C. Evertse Education AE
H.G. Visser Air Transport & Operations - Aerospace Engineering
Research Group
Air Transport & Operations (Aerospace Engineering) (TU Delft)
Emissions Mixed-integer linear programming Airport surface movement planning
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Published Date

01-06-2017

Language

English

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Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Department

Control & Operations

Research Group

Air Transport & Operations

Abstract

This paper presents a study towards the development of a real-time taxi movement planning system that seeks to optimize the timed taxiing routes of all aircraft on an airport surface, by minimizing the emissions that result from taxiing aircraft operations. To resolve this online planning problem, one of the most commonly employed operations research methods for large-scale problems has been successfully used, viz., mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). The MILP formulation implemented herein permits the planning system to update the total taxi planning every 15 s, allowing to respond to unforeseen disturbances in the traffic flow. Extensive numerical experiments involving a realistic (hub) airport environment bear out that an estimated environmental benefit of 1–3 percent per emission product can be obtained. This research effort clearly demonstrates that a surface movement planning system capable of minimizing the emissions in conjunction with the total taxiing time can be beneficial for airports that face dense surface traffic and stringent environmental requirements.