SBIR Phase I: Vianair Airspace Information Model For Airspace Design And Planning

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result from improving the efficiency of air traffic operations and unlocking runway and airspace capacity utilization, thus enabling reduction of emissions, noise impact, flight delays, and operational cost of airports and airlines. As urban metropolitan areas have grown and air traffic has increased, capacity constraints at airports and their surrounding airspace result in daily delays, which propagate throughout the entire National Airspace System affecting almost every person in modern society with negative impact on the economy, the environment, and airport neighboring communities. The proposed innovation will enable airport authorities, airlines and air navigation service providers in the US and worldwide to more efficiently plan, design and manage airspace and airports systems, facilitating the seamless sharing of information between stakeholders, ultimately enabling the transition of the air traffic management system into the future and resulting in significant benefits for the traveling public and the local communities. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop the first-of-its-kind Airspace Information Model (AIM), a dedicated software platform for airspace and airport system planning and design. Currently, airport authorities, airlines and the air navigation service providers use a plethora of tools for airspace and airport system design, planning and performance evaluation. However, existing tools only cater for specific aspects of the operation in isolation and fail to properly evaluate the interactions between system design components and the trade-offs between different performance objectives. As a result, system performance is sub-optimal. The proposed AIM platform combines the functions of Design, Performance Evaluation and Optimization in a single parametric model addressing the airspace design and planning process from a holistic perspective. It also makes an immediate evaluation of all performance trade-offs possible, while accounting for design rules and criteria. Furthermore, this SBIR proposes the development and integration into the AIM platform of the Dynamic Route Concept (DRC), a novel airspace design optimization method that automatically matches airspace design configuration to dynamic air traffic demand, thus enabling pre-tactical decision-making and optimal system performance. The proposed technology has the potential to become the industry-wide standard. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.