TY - JOUR
T1 - Agent-based distributed planning and coordination for resilient airport surface movement operations
AU - Fines, Konstantine
AU - Sharpanskykh, Alexei
AU - Vert, Matthieu
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Airport surface movement operations are complex processes with many types of adverse events which require resilient, safe, and efficient responses. One regularly occurring adverse event is that of runway reconfiguration. Agent-based distributed planning and coordination has shown promising results in controlling operations in complex systems, especially during disturbances. In contrast to the centralised approaches, distributed planning is performed by several agents, which coordinate plans with each other. This research evaluates the contribution of agent-based distributed planning and coordination to the resilience of airport surface movement operations when runway reconfigurations occur. An autonomous Multi-Agent System (MAS) model was created based on the layout and airport surface movement operations of Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. Within the MAS model, three distributed planning and coordination mechanisms were incorporated, based on the Conflict-Based Search (CBS) Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) algorithm and adaptive highways. MAS simulations were run based on eight days of real-world operational data from Schiphol Airport and the results of the autonomous MAS simulations were compared to the performance of the real-world human operated system. The MAS results show that the distributed planning and coordination mechanisms were effective in contributing to the resilient behaviour of the airport surface movement operations, closely following the real-world behaviour, and sometimes even surpassing it. In particular, the mechanisms were found to contribute to more resilient behaviour than the real-world when considering the taxi time after runway reconfiguration events. Finally, the highway included distributed planning and coordination mechanisms contributed to the most resilient behaviour of the airport surface movement operations.
AB - Airport surface movement operations are complex processes with many types of adverse events which require resilient, safe, and efficient responses. One regularly occurring adverse event is that of runway reconfiguration. Agent-based distributed planning and coordination has shown promising results in controlling operations in complex systems, especially during disturbances. In contrast to the centralised approaches, distributed planning is performed by several agents, which coordinate plans with each other. This research evaluates the contribution of agent-based distributed planning and coordination to the resilience of airport surface movement operations when runway reconfigurations occur. An autonomous Multi-Agent System (MAS) model was created based on the layout and airport surface movement operations of Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. Within the MAS model, three distributed planning and coordination mechanisms were incorporated, based on the Conflict-Based Search (CBS) Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) algorithm and adaptive highways. MAS simulations were run based on eight days of real-world operational data from Schiphol Airport and the results of the autonomous MAS simulations were compared to the performance of the real-world human operated system. The MAS results show that the distributed planning and coordination mechanisms were effective in contributing to the resilient behaviour of the airport surface movement operations, closely following the real-world behaviour, and sometimes even surpassing it. In particular, the mechanisms were found to contribute to more resilient behaviour than the real-world when considering the taxi time after runway reconfiguration events. Finally, the highway included distributed planning and coordination mechanisms contributed to the most resilient behaviour of the airport surface movement operations.
KW - Air traffic management
KW - Airport operations
KW - Artificial intelligence
KW - Conflict-based search
KW - Multi-agent path finding
KW - Multi-agent systems
KW - Resilience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083707661&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/aerospace7040048
DO - 10.3390/aerospace7040048
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85083707661
VL - 7
JO - Aerospace — Open Access Aeronautics and Astronautics Journal
JF - Aerospace — Open Access Aeronautics and Astronautics Journal
SN - 2226-4310
IS - 4
M1 - 48
ER -