Requirements and decision model for a taxiway route support system

Airports, are major components of the global transportation network and are the subject of continuous operational improvements. Commercial aviation industry has experienced substantial growth in the last decades. This booming demand generates economic benefits, however, it also increases the congestion levels at airports. While demand is a source of recurrent congestion, it is very common experience other forms of non-recurrent congestion. Extreme weather events, equipment failure and security threats are commonly encountered sources of non-recurrent congestion. This work presents the application of the systems engineering process to build a decision support system for ground traffic control. The proposed model should be able to assist ground traffic control operators to route planes in the taxiways in a system-optimal fashion. Business use cases, requirements, model verification, are presented. The proposed model is able to handle both, recurrent and non-recurrent congestion at the operational level. The proposed model is tested for a single runway airport case with moderate to heavy degree of congestion. Percentage of congestion effectively reduced ranged from 10% to 14%, depending on taxiway geometry. Results are encouraging enough to establish the proposed model as a feasible concept and, a practical system can be developed with further research and development. In addition, non-functional requirements at the management level allow using the model to determine capacity, and measure operational performance.