Event
ISR Student-Fac Colloquium: Avijit Mukherjee, "Air Traffic Management Decision Support Models"
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
12:00 p.m.
A.V. Williams Room 2168
Peggy Johnson
301 405 6615
pjohnson@umd.edu
Decision Support Models and Algorithms that Address Uncertainty in Air Traffic Management
12:00 p.m. Pizza and soft drinks
12:30 p.m. Seminar
Dr. Avijit Mukherjee
Research Associate
Institute for Systems Research
National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR)
University of Maryland
Abstract
In this talk I will first present an overview of NEXTOR's research activities at the University of Maryland. Then, I will present two main bodies of research that I have been involved in the past year.
First is a set of analytical models that can be used to estimate flight delays and cancellations at an airport. The models are not only capable of predicting daily averages, but also generating hourly profiles of cancellation and delays. The models have been calibrated with historical data at two major airports in the U.S. These models have been developed to support strategy simulation exercises that are necessary to evaluate various market-based and administrative mechanisms to allocate landing slots (or authorizations) to various airlines.
The second research addresses the problem of assigning ground delays to aircraft in face of uncertainty on how the capacity of an airport may evolve over time of day. Ground delays, or pre-departure delays, are commonly assigned to mitigate arrival demand-capacity imbalance at an airport, which is typically caused by capacity shortfall due to adverse weather conditions. During a ground delay program, certain flights are delayed at their respective origin airports, and are allowed to depart later than their schedule. The ground-holding problem decides on optimum strategy to assign pre-departure delays to aircraft. We have developed optimization models and efficient algorithms for this purpose.
We show that when there is a chance of early clearance of weather, a rationing policy that prefers a long-haul flight over a short-haul, when then two competes for the same arrival slot, produces most efficient solutions. We then discuss an algorithm that addresses both equity and efficiency while assigning ground delays to aircraft.
Biography
Avijit Mukherjee is a research associate in the Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland. He is involved in several research projects on air traffic management, funded mainly by the FAA and the NASA, at the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) at the University of Maryland. Dr. Mukherjee got his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 2004, and thereafter joined ISR under supervision of Prof. Michael Ball. Last year, in the 5th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management Conference held at Baltimore, two of Dr. Mukherjees papers (which he co-authored with Dr. Michael Ball, Dr. Robert Hoffman, and Dr. David Lovell) won the best paper awards in two separate tracks.
