Rapid Prototyping of Airport Advanced Operational Systems and Procedures through Distributed Simulation

Abstract

Despite the recent crisis in civil aviation, most agree that air traffic growth will soon recover and rise even further. To meet the expected airport demand and improve efficiency of ground operations while maintaining safety, several new operational systems and procedures are being tested and evaluated. Rapid prototyping through modeling and simulation remains a well-suited approach to meet evaluation and assessment requirements. Likewise, simulation is increasingly part of the decision support tools used by both air and ground traffic managers and the airline industry for short-term decision making. Within this context, the French Aeronautics and Space Research Center is designing a set of modeling and simulation tools for rapid prototyping of advanced operational systems and procedures. The main goal of this initiative is to develop an open, scalable, and reusable simulation architecture, facilitating both integration of additional components and interoperability between them, to evaluate and compare several airport configurations.