ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

Investigating how delays & disruptions flow through Air Traffic Control systems

Demand for air travel/transportation is increasing the world over, and due to the increased level of traffic density, air traffic control systems are being pushed closer and closer to their limits. As such delays caused by air traffic control are also on the rise due to this increasing demand.

This project aims to investigate the effects of delays on an air traffic control system. The project seeks to discover the “breaking points” of the system using a computer simulation of an ATC system. The simulation is a multi-agent-based model which simulates the way air traffic controllers interact and how they ‘control’ the aircraft in the system.

The project is divided into two distinct phases, the programming phase and the experimentation phase. The programming phase requires modifying the existing ATC simulator to implement a series of more complex agent interactions, including the ability to refuse flight handoff (transferring control of a flight from one agent to another), and the ability to deal with these handoff refusals through holding patterns.

The experimentation phase involves using the simulator created in the first phase of the project to conduct a series of experiments in order to investigate and determine the properties and performance of the system. This is done through applying a series of scenarios of varying levels of traffic density, and various constraints that can be placed on the controllers to affect their behaviour.