ATCA 59th Annual 2014 Conference Proceedings

PDFTech ReportAir traffic controlFlow control (Air traffic control)Advanced automation system (Air traffic control)Traffic flowTraffic congestionMathematical predictionAlgorithmsUnited StatesGilbo, EugeneSmith, ScottMcKinney, MikeJohn A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (U.S.)United States. Federal Aviation AdministrationAGR-SAFETY AND SECURITY-SAFETY AND SECURITYNTL-AVIATION-AVIATIONNTL-AVIATION-Air Traffic ControlNTL-AVIATION-Airports and FacilitiesNTL-AVIATION-Aviation Safety/AirworthinessNTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-Aviation Safety/AirworthinessNTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-SAFETY AND SECURITYNTL-OPERATIONS AND TRAFFIC CONTROLS-OPERATIONS AND TRAFFIC CONTROLSNTL-OPERATIONS AND TRAFFIC CONTROLS-Traffic FlowVolpe National Transportation Systems Center, Technical Reference CenterThe Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS)currently declares an alert for any 15 minute interval in which the predicted demand exceeds the Monitor/Alert Parameter (MAP)for any airport, sector, or fix. For airports and fixes traffic demand is measured by aggregate 15-minute counts. For a sector, however, TFMS predicts the demand for each minute, and then uses the demand of the peak minute in a 15-minute interval to decide whether to declare an alert for the entire 15-minute interval. Using the peak demand from a single minute to declare alerts has been criticized by TFM specialists for three reasons. First, the demand from a single minute does not accurately reflect the workload for the entire 15-minute interval. Second, using demand for a single minute leads to instability, that is, slight fluctuations in demand from minute to minute can lead to alerts flickering on and off. Third, the interval that is alerted depends on arbituary 15-minute boundaries. To deal with these problems with the current method of declaring alerts, we propose a new method of declaring sector alerts that is based on the patterns of one-minute demands and that matches more closely the intuition of traffic managers about what more likely represents a potential problem