Metrics to Evaluate Multi-Stakeholder Airport Control Center Decision-Making Processes - a Critical Discussion

Abstract

Since the beginning of the century, airport management decision-making processes have been under scientific discussion. The introduction of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A CDM) has set an operational standard which is a about to be succeeded by Total Airport Management and Performance Based Airport Management. Within the design and validation of these concepts and the necessary tools multiple assessments of the decision-making processes have been made. Although being under research for almost 20 years, the right selection of metrics to evaluate the decision-making processes remains still a challenge. Reflecting the different stakeholder objectives and the intricate dependent working processes into metrics and performance indicators is complex and was in some cases not sensitive to the introduced operational improvement.Summarizing the experiences of the past, this paper suggests a novel approach towards the evaluation of airport control centre decision-making processes. This approach assesses performance on bases of comprehensive indicators such as costs and decision time which are valid for all stakeholders. It allows the application of computational power to calculate reliable reference values as well as to identify optimization potentials. Moreover, this paper suggests to encounter objective metrics for human factors aspects as well as to consider additional communication and personality indicators. Last but not least recurrence analysis and cross-lagged panel designs are introduced to analyse effects over time and causal relationships between human factors and performance indicators.This novel approach to decision-making evaluation leads away from single performance indicator selection and assessment to a more comprehensive evaluation of the airport in connection with highly sophisticated communication pattern analysis.