Trafic aérien et complexité.
Stéphane Puechmorel
(ENAC - Toulouse)
The primary goal of Air Traffic Control is to avoid situations in which aircraft are
getting closer than a minimal safe value, the separation norm. Such situations, called
conflicts, induce a workload that will eventually limit the number of aircraft
controllers are willing to accept. A high number of conflicts (either real or potential)
and a possible interdependance between them correspond to a crude definition of traffic
complexity. However, such a measure is related to a human-centric control system that may
change in the future. In the work presented here, a new approach, based on an intrinsic
indicator, is introduced. First of all, aircraft are considered to move according to an
underlying dynamical system. Based on the past aircraft position and velocities and on
the intents (flight plan or reference trajectory for example), a time-dependent vector
field interpolating these data is constructed. Since the interpolation problem is known
to be ill posed, an optimality criterion is added, so that resulting reconstruction falls
in the category of vector splines interpolation. Once the field has been obtained, the
lyapunov spectrum of the associated dynamical system is computed on points evenly spaced
on a spatial grid. The results of the computations are summarized on complexity map, with
high values indicating areas to avoid or to carefully monitor. Potential applications of
this tool will be discussed at the end of the presentation
Retour