Application of Agent-Based Modelling for Evaluating Level of Service in Airports

Abstract

Airports worldwide evaluate Level of service (LOS) to assess performance of the terminal for the current scenario and to compare it to a projected scenario. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) global standard is the widely accepted framework that evaluate airport LOS based on space and time characteristics. The application of simulation tools can be used in this regard to depict the airport LOS scenarios more interactively and in detail. Moreover, this approach also enables modelling future scenarios of technological or infrastructure modifications to cater terminal capacity constraints. The use of Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) in evaluating airport LOS is discussed in this paper. The study utilized field study at the check-in hall of a large-sized airport, the Chennai International airport, India to capture the passenger flow characteristics such as passenger entry rate, walking speed, group size, passenger flow sequence and flight movement frequency. These are used as inputs to a microscopic pedestrian modelling tool, AnyLogic. Three scenarios of airport LOS are modelled to evaluate the passenger density and the dwell times. The results show that the variation in number of service points and flow rate significantly affect the passenger dwell time, queuing length, queuing time and passenger density at the check-in zone. Visual and quantitative representations of the scenarios are also presented, analyzed and compared with the existing standard.