EPSRC Reference:

EP/H004424/2 2011-2015

EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:

Artificial Intelligence Mathematical Aspects of OR Transport Ops & Management

Value (£):

400,474

• Professor EK Burke
• Professor PG Stewart
• Professor Q Zhong
• Dr JA Adkin
• Dr M Eftekhari

This project emerged from the Research Councils’ Energy Programme Sandpit in Airport Operations held at Shrigley Hall, Cheshire between 10-14 November 2008. It represents a wide ranging multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional initiative to exploit recent research advances in automated search methodologies and decision support techniques for air operations (and other related areas). This project opened up a range of exciting and ambitious research directions in the crucially important area of airport operations. The programme of research builds integrated computational models of four key airport operations: Take-off scheduling, Landing Scheduling, Gate Assignment and Baggage flow. The project explores how to build computational models that represent the integration of these problems and it will explore how to develop effective multi-objective search methodologies which will employ the models. At the moment, these operations are addressed in an isolated (and often manual) way. The ultimate goal is to develop innovative search methodologies which are able to operate from a global perspective in order to provide airport operators with a much higher level of computer aided decision support than is available today. Integrating these four operations and exploring new and exciting ways of generating high quality solutions to the integrated problem is the broad basic aim. We worked closely with colleagues at Manchester and Zurich airports to ensure that we have continuous access to real world expertise and data. The proposal brings together a balanced inter-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers to investigate a series of novel research challenges with the overall goal of underpinning the development of tomorrow’s airport operations decision support systems.

Publications

2013

• Ravizza S., Chen J., Atkin J., Burke E. and Stewart P., “The trade-off between taxi time and fuel consumption in airport ground movement”, Springer-Verlag Journal of Public Transport Planning and Operations, ISSN: 1866-749X (print version), ISSN: 1613-7159 (electronic version), DOI 10.1007/s12469-013-0060-1, Volume 5, Issue 1 (2013), Page 25-40

2014

• Ravizza, Stefan and Chen, Jun and Atkin, Jason A. D. and Stewart, Paul and Burke, Edmund K. (2014) Aircraft taxi time prediction: comparisons and insights. Applied Soft Computing, 14 (c). pp. 397-406. ISSN 1568-4946

2015

• Jun Chen, Michal Weiszer, Paul Stewart and Masihalah Shabani, (2015) ‘Towards a More Realistic, Cost Effective and Greener Ground Movement through Active Routing: Part 1-Optimal Speed Profile Generation’, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Issue 99, pp 1-14, ISSN: 1524-9050, DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2015.2477350, November 2015-11-18
• Michal Weiszer, Jun Chen, Paul Stewart (2015), ‘A real-time Active Routing approach via a database for airport surface movement‘. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 58, Part A, September 2015, Pages 127–145 DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2015.07.011

2016

• Jun Chen, Michal Weiszer, Giorgio Locatelli, Stefan Ravizza, Jason A. Atkin, Paul Stewart and Edmund Burke, (2016) ‘Towards a More Realistic, Cost Effective and Greener Ground Movement through Active Routing: Part 2-A Multi-Objective Shortest Path Approach’ , IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems, December 2016, 17(12):3524-3540) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2016.2587619

2018

• Michal Weiszer, Jun Chen, Paul Stewart, (2018) ‘Preference-based evolutionary algorithm for airport surface operations’, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 91, June 2018, Pages 296–316, doi: 10.1016/j.trc.2018.04.008