CREATE (innovative operations and Climate and weatheR modEls to improve ATm resiliencE and reduce impacts) aimed to study and implement innovative procedures in the field of air traffic management to reduce the impact on the climate and the environment, while making it more resilient to weather phenomena. New methodologies in regards of the definition of the concept of operations (CONOPS) and use-cases have been developed for both en-route and TMA airspaces.
Overall CREATE objectives include:
1. development of new tools and methodologies for studying the impact of aviation on the environment both on the short- and long-term scales, and the vulnerability of the ATM system, in order to propose ATM operational changes able to reduce such impact and vulnerability
2. development of new meteorological tools and methodologies, integrating their use in the ATM system
3. Validations of proposed ATM operational changes to reduce ATM environmental impact and improve ATM resilience with respect to weather.
The ATM system was looked at from the perspective of 1) en-route operations with a focus on minimum environmental and climate impact, and 2) TMA operations which include approach/departure operations near airports with a focus on resilience to weather conditions and local air quality. New methodologies in regards of the definition of the concept of operations (CONOPS) and use-cases, which provide the baseline for the ATM trajectory/procedures optimisation framework, were developed for these two airspaces.
For the above mentioned objectives, the CREATE project proposed three solutions:
• CREATE-SOL-1: Multi-scale multi-pollutant air quality system software
• CREATE-SOL-2: Multi-aircraft environmentally-scored weather-resilient optimized 4D-trajectories in the flight execution phase
• CREATE-SOL-3: CO2 and non-CO2 balanced Environmental Scores Module
The first solution enabled the evaluation of the impact that the air traffic regulation policy options can have on the environment and climate. For demonstration purposes, this approach was carried out through a modelling software system to support the aviation community in estimating the extent of the environmental impacts that current and future air traffic movements might have. The second solution aimed to address both terminal area and en-route operations and was conceived as an air traffic control (ATC) decision support tool (DST) – in line with the SESAR extended ATC planning (EAP) and integrated network for (extended) ATC planning (INAP) concepts – to support the update and revision process of the reference business trajectory (RBT) in highly disrupted scenarios due to weather hazards or climate-sensitive zones.The third solution specifically addressed the CO2 and non-CO2 effects during the en-route flight phase, to evaluate the “greenness” of aircraft trajectories related to flight and ATC sector environmental performance, which is useful in performance dashboards for airlines and ATC service providers. An Environmental Scoring Module (ESM) was developed, assigning scores to each candidate trajectory (CT). ESM considered non-CO2, NOx, H2O and contrail formation.
