Collaborative Airport Traffic System (CATS) to Evaluate Design Requirements for an Airport Surface Departure Management System

Abstract

Airport surface delays can impact operational costs, environmental emissions, and passenger satisfaction. Departure metering is one alternative approach to airport surface departure management intended to better manage such delays and associated costs. We introduce a simulation environment that can be used to explore human factors issues in the design of such procedures. This includes support for a novel role, the Departure Reservoir Coordinator, responsible for managing the metering procedure, a distributed adaptive planning task. Support for such a novel role can be explored in the Collaborative Airport Traffic System (CATS) simulation environment using prototype information displays, user interaction designs, and a capability for study participants to monitor the impacts of their actions on airport performance in real time. We intend to demonstrate the CATS simulation test bed that facilitates such studies in an effort to better understand human factors requirements for the design of collaborative airport surface departure procedures.