Sector Dynamic Capacity Forecast Under Severe Weather

Severe weather is one of the main reasons leading to the decline of sector capacity. Because the weather is complicated and changeable, the impacts of weather on capacity have significant randomness, real-time and the dynamic characteristic. Accurate and timely dynamic capacity prediction under severe weather conditions can improve the working efficiency of air traffic controllers, and also is an important basis for making air traffic flow management strategy.The paper firstly introduced the definition and influencing factors of controller workload, and several typical assessment methods were analyzed. Then the definition of sector dynamic capacity and sector capacity evaluation methods were introduced. For the characteristics of actual control sector, the controller workload was re-classified and a new controller workload model was proposed, at the same time, the existing capacity evaluation method was improved to provide a more scientific basis for the prediction of sector dynamic capacity. During the following step, the paper analyzed the impact of different levels of severe weather on airspace, and the sector dynamic capacity evaluation model was set up. Taking Hangzhou approach sector as an example, sector dynamic capacity was evaluated with the presented model, the result accorded with the practice and validated the validity of the proposed model and method. In addition, as a supplement of the sector dynamic capacity prediction method, this paper also proposed the simulation evaluation method for the sector dynamic capacity prediction with RAMS simulation system. Finally, the main contributions and inadequacies were summarized, and the future research direction was viewed.