Evaluation of General-Purpose Construction Simulation and Visualization tools for Modeling and Animating AirSide Airport Operations

Abstract

This paper illustrates how simulation modeling and visualization can be of substantial help in studying airside airport operations, and can greatly contribute in planning and designing construction operations at airports in a way that has the least impact on airside operations. The characteristic that distinguishes the current work is the capability to model and animate airside airport operations with high fidelity using general purpose discrete event simulation and visualization tools typically used to model and animate construction operations. The focus of the presented work is on evaluating the capabilities of state-of-the-art construction simulation and visualization tools in being able to accurately model and animate airside airport operations. The paper presents the simulation model and 3D animation of the airside operations at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) in Romulus, Michigan. It also presents simultaneous modeling and visualization of operations in two different domains (i.e. airside operations and construction). The solution to the problem is described in detail using a simulation model developed in STROBOSCOPE and a 3D animation created using VITASCOPE. The obtained results highlight and prove that general-purpose tools, even if originally designed for specific domains, can be effective in studying operations involving the interaction of entities in multiple domains such as construction and airport operations.

A comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of virtual reality, 3D visualization and 2D visual interactive simulation: an exploratory meta-analysis

“…Khoury et al 73 Otamendi et al 32 Van Orden and Broyles 76 Den Hengst et al 60 Smallman et al 90 Khosravi et al 97 John et al 45…”

“…Akpan and Brooks 11 Alberts et al 51 Wenzel Jessen 56 Choi et al 58 Fishwick 65 Khoury et al 73 Wainer and Liu 36 7…”

Simulation-Based Virtual Cycle for Multi-Level Airport Analysis

“…In [10], for instance, a general-purpose, activity-based and discrete-event simulation tool was used for modelling airport runway operations where the performance in terms of runway capacity and delays was evaluated. Another airside simulation model using general-purpose discrete-event simulation software was developed in [11], and this demonstrated good potential to perform analysis and visual validation. In [12], a complete airport airside simulation model was developed; in this work, an analysis of airside congestion was undertaken in which the main indicators were arrival and departure delays, runway throughput, and gate occupancy.…”

A Generic Framework for Modeling Airport Operations At A Macroscopic Level

“…Environmental constraints, societal, technical and land use restrictions hinder the expansion of airports to accommodate more capacity, and one of the main indicator of congestion is the delay experienced by flights. In the last decades, studies about airport operations have been focused on improving their efficiency and effectiveness with the aim of improving airport capacity, both for airspace (Kleinman et al 1998;Zuniga et al 2013;Zheng et al 2015;Klein 2017), and ground operations (Khoury et al 2007;Martinez et al 2014). These studies implement simulation techniques for evaluating airport performance.…”