Dealing with Adverse Weather Conditions by Enhanced Collaborative Decision Making in a TAM APOC

This paper will provide an insight into enhanced collaborative decision making being conducted in adverse weather conditions in a simulated Oslo airport environment. This simulation is part of the Total Airport Management (TAM) research in the Single European Sky ATM Research program (SESAR 2020) as project PJ.04. SESAR2020 is operated in two defined program waves, wave 1 covering the years 2016–2019 and wave 2 following until 2022. This paper will focus on a set of two out of seven V2 level validation exercises that are conducted in wave 1 of PJ.04′s Solution 2 (PJ.04–02), addressing concepts for Collaborative Airport Performance Management. The key objective of PJ.04–02 is to develop multi-stakeholder decision support for airport management stakeholders especially in adverse conditions (e.g. bad weather, union strikes or unforeseen events such as runway blockages). In the Oslo airport environment winter conditions are a major reason for performance degradation of airport operations. An enhanced integration of stakeholder actions and collaborative operations planning is expected to provide performance benefits. The philosophy of collaborative decision making advocated by SESAR 2020 is that of ‘consensus’ building amongst the different airport stakeholders through a common impact assessment and a structured solution finding process resulting in mutually agreed actions. The objective is to raise situation awareness and introduce a collaborative problem solving approach leading to better, earlier and therefore more stable solutions. Orchestrated by a moderator, the so-called airport operations center supervisor, the global impact assessment is supported by each stakeholder evaluating the consequences for their own operations, documented in an electronic impact and corresponding solution message. The validation and assessment of the underlying conceptual approach to collaborative airport performance management in adverse conditions requests for an artificial airport environment. In contrast to a real airport the simulated environment allows for any necessary changes in weather situation, traffic patterns or support system composition while keeping the operators in the loop. The target level for the validation experiments is V2 (referring to the European operational concept validation methodology), requiring the simulator to allow for an operational concept feasibility assessment while providing emulation of all airport processes and working positions of the airport management. The objective assessment of benefits credited to specific operational improvements under consideration of the validation exercises PJ.04–02.V2.04 and PJ.04–02.V2.09 requires a stepwise approach in which the functionality and system complexity is consecutively enhanced. The baseline was represented by the results achieved by SESAR 1, providing an airport operations center (APOC), basic processes and support system functionality. The functionality of the V2.04 setup reflected the SESAR2020 solution regarding advanced decision support, providing dynamic demand and capacity balancing alongside a guided enhanced collaborative decision making process and enhanced meteorological forecasts by weather alerts. The V2.09 solution setup provides additional information support by a performance dashboard, taking into account probabilities for additional diverted traffic. Two exercise simulation runs were executed for each setup, subjecting the Oslo operators with different meteorological phenomena and resulting operational challenges. The PJ.04–02 validation objectives were broken down into exercise specific objectives, allowing for an impartial feasibility assessment based on objective metrics and qualitative human performance criteria. Preliminary exercise analysis results indicate a well-received conceptual approach, the stepwise functionality enhancement complying with benefit increase expectations.