OptiFrame’s activities performed in the period March 2016 – February 2018 have been fully aligned with the research activities and associated objectives and outcomes described in the project’s work plan. The project achieved all its stated objectives. The project organised two workshops to receive input from the ATM stakeholders in order to develop and validate the OptiFrame concept. The technical activities of the project were carried out in WP2 -- WP7.
The activities of WP2 were centred on two major project milestones: 1) a review of the state-of-the-art on ATFM, and 2) the organization of the 1st Stakeholders’ workshop that provided essential input for incorporating into the OptiFrame model the stakeholders’ priorities and preferences.
WP3 focused on the design and implementation of the Data Management Platform to support the extraction of data from EUROCONTROL data repositories.
WP4 developed mathematical models to design efficient 4D trajectories for all flights obtained by minimising the deviation from the preferred trajectories proposed by the Airspace Users (AUs). The following priorities mechanisms were also incorporated in the OptiFrame model: 1) Fleet Delay Re-ordering, 2) Selective Flight Protection, and 3) Margins.
WP5 focused on the design, implementation and testing of both exact and heuristic algorithms to solve numerical instances of the developed models. The heuristic algorithm was developed in order to address the scalability issue of the exact method. Indeed, it was able to generate a very good approximation of the exact efficient frontier in reasonable computational time.
WP6 activities were related to both qualitative and quantitative validation of OptiFrame to ensure that the : 1) proposed mathematical model was aligned with the requirements of the TBO concept and the expectations of the stakeholders, 2) proposed solution methods can cope with the computational requirements of the problem, and 3) generated trajectories are aligned with trajectories generated by other tools, e.g. NEST.
OptiFrame model was validated under nominal and disturbance scenarios. The main conclusions and findings is that OptiFrame is able to adhere to the capacity of sectors and airports using both departure delays and route alterations. The OptiFrame models generate solutions that give the stakeholders the freedom to change the focus from departure delay to trajectory deviation in a gradual way. As a con, OptiFrame model may generate a considerable number of flight level changes, thus requiring an improvement of the model through: 1) further calibration of the of the OptiFrame model parameters that establish the relative importance between planar and vertical trajectory changes, and 2) the introduction of additional constraints limiting the number of vertical changes.
Activities of WP7 focused on organizing the 2nd Stakeholders’ workshop, identifying the OptiFrame implications for decision making and disseminating the results. The objectives of the 2nd workshop were: 1) to present the OptiFrame results to the ATM stakeholders, 2) to receive feedback from the stakeholders regarding the alignment of the project with the stakeholders expectations, and 3) to identify potential improvements of OptiFrame and set the agenda for future TBO research. The decision making implications of OptiFrame were demonstrated through: 1) what if analysis for scenarios related to airport capacity and sector restrictions, 2) the analysis of alternative UDPP schemes, and 3) its ability to support Collaborative Decision Making.
The OptiFrame approach and results are summarised in an electronic project brochure available on the project web site
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/optiframe/(opens in new window) . The results have been also presented in international conferences and workshops targeting specific audiences. AIRO 2016, AIRO 2017, IMA-ORS, INFORMS, ECSO2017 and TRB conferences to reach the scientific community; ATM R&D Seminar and SID2016 to reach practitioners, policy makers, scientific community and industry.
