Modeling Requirements to Support Assessment of NextGen Mid-Term Performance

Abstract

The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Concept of Operations addresses air transportation operations in the 2025 timeframe. Although NextGen is expected to include revolutionary solutions for handling the anticipated increase in demand in the National Airspace System (NAS) in this timeframe, implementation of the new systems and procedures will still have to evolve over time. Assessment of NextGen performance needs to address the target timeframe of 2025, as well as reasonably defined intermediate time points to understand its progression. The FAA has released its NextGen Implementation Plan (NGIP) to address the FAA’s portion of the work needed to realize NextGen, covering the FAA’s plan through the mid-term period of 2018. This NGIP serves as a good source of information to assess the NextGen mid-term performance as a transitional step towards the envisioned 2025-timeframe NextGen. This paper describes a study to establish the mid-term NextGen performance for defining scenarios for analyses of integrated concepts, technologies, and procedures under development in NASA’s Airspace Systems Program amidst projected FAA infrastructure development. The study involves a two-step process: it starts with a careful analysis of the NGIP documents in conjunction with an extensive literature search to identify research results applicable to NextGen to sort out the concepts, activities, and technologies, resulting in a proposed subset of these items; the process then focuses on the selected NGIP items to recommend modeling options to support simulation assessment of NextGen mid-term performance.