A Simple Process Simulation Model for Strategic Planning of Airport Airside

Abstract

Strategic planning for airport design and operations is a challenging task, since it should consider: (1) a variety of alternative futures; (2) their consequences for airport performance; and (3) possible strategies for ensuring that the airport meets its business objectives. Existing models and tools for quantifying airport performance require significant data and substantial modeling effort, and do not readily produce the information relevant to decision-makers. Therefore, a fast and simple simulation model is needed that provides insight into the key performance indicators of an airport for different strategies across different futures. In this paper, a simple simulation model is developed. Different scenarios, with increasing traffic and changing traffic distribution, are simulated with a general simulation platform called ProModel, which can provide output data for airport capacity evaluation and checks for bottleneck. Case studies show that the model can be easily executed and proved to be feasible to quickly generate interest results for decision-makers.