The ADAPT project had three main activities: (1) Development of the ADAPT strategic solution, (2) Tactical assessment, and (3) Visualisation.
The development of the ADAPT strategic solution which included the formulation and implementation of a deterministic model (European Strategic Flight Planning (ESFP) model) to define flight trajectories, their time windows and critical network elements at the strategic level; computational experiments and results are described in D3.1. Further, the assessment of the expected economic loss in case unwanted events occurring (e.g. flight delays, bad weather); and the identification and application of mitigation actions to improve the situation identified by the ESFP results (see D3.2).
ADAPT’s strategic flight planning solution is acceptable as long as these efforts result in better tactical/actual operations. Therefore, the tactical impact of the strategic solution from a flight-centric and a network-wide point of view has been assessed using simulation and stochastic modelling.
A data visualisation tool (
https://visualization.adapt-h2020.eu(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) fed by the results of the strategic solution models was developed (a) better understand the quality of computed solutions and (b) propose an initial working prototype of a tool based on innovative visualisation techniques to support strategic level decisions for network management.
The key results of the ADAPT project can be summarised as follows:
1. Definition of a methodology (see D3.1) for a quantitative determination of the flexibility in terms of TWs.
2. Using real air traffic data of the fifth busiest day in 2017 (1st September) for the entire ECAC area, computational experiments show that a very large share (55.3%) of flights enjoys the maximum allowed flexibility (TW duration = 15 minutes), whereas only a minor part (3.5%) is constrained to TWs’ duration lower than 5 minutes. About 12% of sector-hours are saturated.
3. As ADAPT solution allows for what-if scenario assessments, the introduction of mitigation measures was tested.
4. Tactical, flight-centric assessment shows that: when considering uncertainties related to weather conditions (wind)and departure delays the assessments show that strategic TWs are robust enough to cope with such sources of uncertainty (see D4.1). Overall, the fuel consumption additionally needed to enforce adherence to the TWs increases as the TW duration decreases (see D4.2).
5. Tactical, network-wide assessment shows that TWs might reduce the controller’s workload (measured in terms of number of re-routings, flight level changes and directs), see D5.2.
6. The development of an ad-hoc visualisation tool for the strategic flight planning facilitates the understanding of the results and ensures a more effective dissemination of the project results across operational and practitioner stakeholders (see D5.3).
