Practical Method for 4-Dimentional Strategic Air Traffic Management Problem With Convective Weather Uncertainty

Abstract

Strategic air traffic management (SATM) problem, one of the critical tasks in air traffic operations, faces new challenges as the increased concerns on environmental impact and operation efficiency of the air transportation, and the system uncertainty increases due to the time-varying interference, such as the convective weather. To effectively address these challenges, we propose the formulation and solution of a generalized 4-D SATM problem for an air traffic system with convective weather uncertainty. The proposed SATM problem formulation is computationally tractable and the schedule results can realize the avoidance of the convective weather with more than a tolerable risk probability. We provide a solution approach to tackle this problem with complex mathematical basics and illustrate the capabilities of the proposed mixed integer solution approach on the real regional air traffic system operated by the China civil aviation administration. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution approach.