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A Successful Landing: Modeling Chicago's Airspace in Real Time August 2009
If you've ever passed through Chicago's O'Hare Airport, you probably know firsthand that it's one of the world's busiest. Airplanes awaiting their turn for takeoff line up on the runway like taxicabs during rush hour. Numerous industry projections estimate that O'Hare will only get busier in the future. The strain on the airport has created the need for more capacity. Fortunately, a major effort designed to ease congestion—the $6.6 billion, multiphase O'Hare Modernization Program (OMP)—is already underway. The OMP will increase the number of air traffic control towers and runways to meet the region's current and future aviation needs. MITRE, which operates the Federal Aviation Administration's federally funded research and development center, has been supporting the OMP in a variety of ways. Among the most notable: When two key stakeholders couldn't settle on the best way to work air traffic into new routes, we devised a modeling technique for on-site testing to help them reach consensus. Keeping Humans in the Loop "Last year, MITRE was asked to help solve a challenge that affected the airspace changes for the OMP's first phase," explains Shane Miller, a MITRE principal software application development engineer. "Two facilities—the Chicago Terminal Radar Approach Control [known in aviation parlance as C90] and the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center [known as ZAU]—couldn't agree on how southbound departures should be delivered to five new departure tracks." The term "human-in-the-loop" refers to a modeling and simulation experiment that involves both computers and humans using a particular application. The goals of such experiments are varied. In the case of air-traffic human-in-the-loop simulations, often the goal is to identify how to efficiently manage traffic through a piece of airspace, while at the same time balancing air traffic controller workload across multiple facilities. Asked to Help Solve a Problem While C90 is responsible for airspace at 15,000 feet and below, and the planes flying through it, ZAU is responsible for the airspace above. Typically, the two facilities work together on departures. "Both facilities tried on their own many times, over months, to agree on the best way to deliver departures from C90 to ZAU," Miller explains. "But as the deadline for a decision approached, there was still no firm agreement on how to handle the delivery of departures. One option, for example, was to merge and sequence departures from O'Hare and Midway into each of the five new streams, while the other option was to stack O'Hare departures on top of Midway departures." With the deadline looming in a month, the FAA asked MITRE to resolve the problem. A team of five engineers, including Miller, Thor Abrahamsen, Lee Brown, Steve Kalbaugh, and Leang Ross, accompanied by two simulation modeling experts, Paul MacWilliams and Jeff Shepley, traveled to Chicago with much gear in tow. The team arrived at C90's location early on a Monday morning with a dozen computers, four projectors, routers, cables, and everything else necessary to set up a lab in the facility's conference room. By Tuesday morning, ZAU and C90 employees were looking at their respective airspace on computer screens and simulating their roles of working on air traffic challenges from actual, real-time radar data. The novel experiment marked the first time an HITL evaluation of this type was taken on the road. While MITRE has conducted such experiments at a single terminal facility, it was the first time combined, interactive modeling for both a terminal and a busy center was deployed on location. In this case, MITRE's HITL simulation allowed C90 and en route controllers to talk to one another and control the same aircraft. The mission was to clarify which option was the best way to handle southbound Chicago departure traffic over five departure tracks instead of three. To make the results as robust as possible, additional air traffic controllers were summoned to the conference room from their normal shift work to take part in the activity. Ranking for Results "We ran five different proposed departure-track scenarios over the course of the week, so both facilities could evaluate all proposed options for transitioning southbound departures," Miller recalls. "But by the end there was still no clear agreement between the two parties. So we had each facility rank the five options, based on what was most important to them." The ranking process uncovered a point of agreement—both C90 and ZAU ranked one particular scenario at the same level of desirability. The ultimate result? The modeling provided enough information to resolve the issue so that both facilities were comfortable with the outcome: All five southbound departure tracks are used by both O'Hare and Midway airports independently. When the timing of the departures is such that two departures, one from each airport, would like to use the same track at the same time, the O'Hare departure is stacked on top of the Midway departure. ZAU has since followed up with MITRE, partnering with us to determine best practices for its own airspace when running the agreed-upon departure routes. As the O'Hare Modernization Program continues its rollout, Miller notes that "the work we performed at our sponsor's location, in addition to the preparation and follow-up tasks we have conducted, should have a positive benefit for anyone whose plane has to fly through Chicago airspace." —by Cheryl Scaparrotta Related Information Articles and News
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