Exploitable results
1. Elicitation of use cases
Demand and supply-side analyses were conducted regarding tools for assisting airport-domain experts. The demand-side survey consisted of interviews with a selection of stakeholders (9 international airports in 7 EU Member States, one major airline, 3 national air traffic service providers, 3 governmental institutions, Eurocontrol and the European Commission) and a stakeholder workshop. This which resulted in a prioritised list of potential use cases for the SPADE system.
The supply-side analysis prepared a list of state-of-the-art decision-support tools (building on results obtained in the EC projects APRON and OPAL) and a structured template for a systematic description of these tools. Each of the identified tools was described, addressing its capabilities, integration constraints and requirements, as well as its potential contribution to the SPADE system.
The demand-side survey and the supply-side analysis was then matched and analysed to determine existing tool combinations that can be used and integrated in order to perform the elicited use cases. This resulted in a list of 18 use cases for possible implementation in the SPADE system. They were subdivided into:
a) 'Strategic' use cases (providing decision-support for a medium or long-term time horizon through the use of macroscopic, low level-of-detail tools), as follows:
- expanding airport landside infrastructure
- airside infrastructure development
- airport capacity management
- new equipment, technology or procedures
- sharp traffic increase
- change in operating conditions
- identification of capacity bottlenecks and shortages.
b) 'Operational' use cases (providing decision-support for a short- to medium-term time horizon through the use of microscopic, high level-of-detail tools), as follows:
- impact of fleet characteristics
- (re-) allocation of flights
- impact of new airport equipment and procedures
- analysis of impact of new procedures
- weather forecast in capacity
- airport capacity determination
- new security devices and/or procedures
- taxiing methodology
- airport capacity versus airside factors
- resources workload and its impact on airport capacity
- trade-off airport capacity versus environmental capacity/airport performance.
2. Specification of system
A system architecture for SPADE was specified using Unified Process and UML (Unified Modelling Language). A list of requirements was prepared and subdivided into use/user related requirements and technical related requirements. Design considerations were also identified, concerning the SPADE system's capabilities that are desirable or 'nice to have', but that depend on the selected use cases. Use cases, leading to the development of a specification, were provided for four components:
-input component,
- computational component,
- output component,
- airport data model.
3. Evaluation of specification
A formal evaluation of the specification of this system was carried out, comparing the functional system specification against the use cases elicited in order to ensure conformance to the latter, identify any area of non-conformance and propose and implement any corrective actions required.
4. Design of system
The design of the overall SPADE platform first focused on architectural design, followed by an object-oriented approach to the four components listed above. The resulting design consists of a general part, dealing with functions such as login and use case selection, and common classes for the basic component connections. These common classes ensure that the basic structure of all use case implementations will be the same, and that new use cases may easily be added to the system.
5. Design validation
A generic validation methodology was prepared, including supporting material such as assessment attributes and metrics, validation techniques and templates to be used in the validation process.
The Prototype element of the project produced the following key results:
An early prototype of the SPADE system was developed in order to validate the concept. This was based on the implementation two use cases - one operational and one strategic - and used real airport data:
- Operational use case: Assessment of a change in fleet characteristics (e.g. aircraft type, city pair, airline or flight schedule) on the airport operations (capacity, efficiency, environmental impact, cost/benefit analysis). Typical end uses are airport and airline decision-makers.
- Strategic use case: Airport capacity management - decision-support to issues such as impact assessment of changes in the physical airside or landside infrastructure of an airport, changes in operational standards or requirements, or changes in traffic distribution, mix or volume. Typical end users are high-level airport decision-makers, civil aviation authorities, and slot co-ordinators.
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