Airport airside capacity analysis: Fuzzy inference system for air traffic controllers' decision process

The subject of this thesis is the air traffic control (ATC) system and the air traffic controllers' decision process. This study analyzes how air traffic controllers make decisions on guiding the aircraft landing process and offers a set of models to analyze airport airside capacity and the effects of resequencing landings on the capacity.; The approach taken in this study is microscopic. The decision process of air traffic controllers is modeled taking into account the controllers' behavior characteristics in terms of perception and reaction and application of the rules of control. Fuzzy logic is introduced to account for the decision process under uncertainty and the vagueness in perception and interpretation of decision rules. Fuzzy logic incorporates the inherent vagueness of human decision making process and has been applied to various control processes. It is a rule based decision system, for which the input is the perceived condition on the characteristics of the aircraft and the ATC environment and the processor of the system is the set of air traffic control rules, which is interpreted by the controllers.; The models are applied to two cases, for arrivals only and mixed (arrival and departure) operations. Using data from the real world, the runway capacities estimated by that proposed fuzzy logic models are compared with those estimated by the conventional deterministic model and also contrasted with those observed in the actual situations. From this comparison, it is found that the fuzzy logic models can better represent the real world situation than the traditional deterministic model. The differences between the actual controllers' decision making and the models' outputs are identified.; The models are also used to evaluate the effect of resequencing aircraft landing during the busy period. It was found that by resequencing based on a certain set of rules, the capacity of runway can be improved.; The models developed should be useful for assessing the capacity of run-way considering the difference between individual controllers in applying the control rules. The effect of resequencing the arrival aircraft to increase capacity can also be reviewed by using the sequencing aircraft model. The models can also be used to analyze the extent of rigidity in the air traffic control rules.