An airspace capacity-based safety assessment model considering UAS integration

Complexity is a measure of the difficulty that a particular air traffic situation represents to Air Traffic Controller (ATCo). This measure impacts on ATCo workload, which is an important factor for defining airspace capacity. This paper presents an evaluation of the impact of the insertion of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) on safety levels within a non-segregated airspace based on the calculation of airspace capacity. The experiments consider a sector of a complex Terminal Control Area (TMA) as well as failures of command and control (C2) link of RPA. This research considers different scenarios, varying the presence of RPA (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%) in the sample, applying contingency procedures in the case that the C2 link is lost. Finally, the proposed experiments showed that, considering the additional activities related to RPA operation, the contingency operation land at nearest appropriate designated landing site presents the most significant impact.

[1]  Arnab Majumdar,et al.  Factors Affecting Air Traffic Controller Workload: Multivariate Analysis Based on Simulation Modeling of Controller Workload , 2002 .

[2]  David Guerin.  Consideration of wake turbulence during the integration of Remotely Piloted Aircraft into the air traffic management system , 2015, 2015 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS).

[3]  Giancarmine Fasano,et al.  Sense and avoid for unmanned aircraft systems , 2016, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine.

[4]  Jean-Pierre Nicolaon,et al.  The Tactical Load Smoother for Multi-Sector Planning , 1998 .

[5]  T. Shmelova,et al.  Modeling of the decision making by UAV's operator in emergency situations , 2016, 2016 4th International Conference on Methods and Systems of Navigation and Motion Control (MSNMC).

[6]  Frederick Wieland,et al.  Performance experiments with the high level architecture and the total airport and airspace model (TAAM) , 2003, Seventeenth Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation, 2003. (PADS 2003). Proceedings..

[7]  Aaron Mcfadyen,et al.  Simulation and modelling tools for quantitative safety assessments of unmanned aircraft systems and operations , 2016, 2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[8]  Todd R. Truitt,et al.  Integrating UAS Operations in Class C Airspace , 2015 .

[9]  D. J. Morrice,et al.  TOTAL AIRPORT AND AIRSPACE MODEL (TAAM) PARALLELIZATION COMBINING SEQUENTIAL AND PARALLEL ALGORITHMS FOR PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT , 2003 .

[10]  Pablo Royo Chic,et al.  Real-time simulations to evaluate the RPAS integration in shared airspace , 2014 .

[11]  R. H. Mogford,et al.  The Complexity Construct in Air Traffic Control: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature. , 1995 .

[12]  Roy Kalawsky,et al.  Integration of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in non-segregated airspace: A complex system of systems problem , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Systems Conference.

[13]  John W. Polak,et al.  Estimating Capacity of Europe’s Airspace Using a Simulation Model of Air Traffic Controller Workload , 2001 .

[14]  Reg Austin,et al.  Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Uavs Design, Development and Deployment , 2010 .

[15]  Yoohwan Kim,et al.  Implementation of detection and tracking mechanism for small UAS , 2016, 2016 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS).

[16]  Pablo Royo Chic,et al.  Real-time Simulations to Evaluate RPAS Contingencies in Shared Airspace , 2015 .

[17]  Amina Dervic,et al.  ATC complexity measures: Formulas measuring workload and complexity at Stockholm TMA , 2015 .