IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jaitra/v120y2024ics0969699724001327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring the conflict risk characteristics of air weaving sections in Metroplex terminal areas with flight trajectory data and adaptive graph spatial-temporal transformer

Author

Listed:
  • Bao, Jie
  • Zhang, Zijie
  • Zhang, Junfeng
  • Chen, Yixuan
  • Gui, Xuhao

Abstract

Metroplex terminal areas is involved with numerous air weaving sections, where various types of arrival and departure traffic flows intersect or converge, leading to high-risk aircraft conflicts and inefficient Metroplex operation. The primary objective of this study is to explore the conflict risk characteristics of operational interactions between airports in Metroplex terminal areas with large-scale trajectory data, including risk evaluation, risk propagation and risk prediction. One complete month of ADS-B trajectory data is collected from a representative multi-airport system in Central and South China to illustrate the procedure. Specifically, flight trajectories are firstly clustered within Metroplex terminal areas, and a trajectory-tube model is then built to characterize the airport flows within the same cluster. Then, a clustering-based collision probability calculation method is proposed to evaluate the risk of air weaving sections. The spatial patterns of risks in air weaving sections reveal that operational interactions among Metroplex airports are quite different under various runway configurations. Furthermore, an adaptive graph spatial-temporal transformer (ASTT) network is developed to predict the future risk of each air weaving section in Metroplex terminal areas. The results indicate that the developed ASTT network can collaboratively encode the spatiotemporal characteristics in the air weaving section risk data, which achieves more accurate and robust prediction performance than other compared models during multiple look-ahead time steps. Moreover, the adaptive spatial graph technique designed in the ASTT can also reveal the hidden risk propagation effects among air weaving sections. The results of this study could provide insightful suggestions to air traffic authorities for developing effective coordination and conflict mitigation strategies, such as redesigning flight procedures, reallocating routes, and optimizing aircraft sequences to enhance the efficiency and safety of Metroplex operations.

Suggested Citation

  • Bao, Jie & Zhang, Zijie & Zhang, Junfeng & Chen, Yixuan & Gui, Xuhao, 2024. "Exploring the conflict risk characteristics of air weaving sections in Metroplex terminal areas with flight trajectory data and adaptive graph spatial-temporal transformer," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:120:y:2024:i:c:s0969699724001327
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2024.102667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699724001327
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jairtraman.2024.102667?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cai, Kaiquan & Shen, Zhiqi & Luo, Xiaoyan & Li, Yue, 2023. "Temporal attention aware dual-graph convolution network for air traffic flow prediction," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    2. Sidiropoulos, Stavros & Majumdar, Arnab & Han, Ke, 2018. "A framework for the optimization of terminal airspace operations in Multi-Airport Systems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 160-187.
    3. Ding, Yida & Wandelt, Sebastian & Wu, Guohua & Xu, Yifan & Sun, Xiaoqian, 2023. "Towards efficient airline disruption recovery with reinforcement learning," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Linlin Chen & Shuihua Han & Chaokan Du & Zongwei Luo, 2022. "A real-time integrated optimization of the aircraft holding time and rerouting under risk area," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 310(1), pages 7-26, March.
    2. Ruan, Liying & Gardi, Alessandro & Sabatini, Roberto, 2021. "Operational efficiency analysis of Beijing multi-airport terminal airspace," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    3. Liu, Wenjing & Delahaye, Daniel & Cetek, Fulya Aybek & Zhao, Qiuhong & Notry, Philippe, 2024. "Comparison of performance between PMS and trombone arrival route topologies in terminal maneuvering area," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    4. Wang, Qi & Mao, Jianing & Wen, Xin & Wallace, Stein W. & Deveci, Muhammet, 2025. "Flight, aircraft, and crew integrated recovery policies for airlines - A deep reinforcement learning approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 245-258.
    5. Chen, Yunxiang & Zhao, Yifei & Wu, Yexin, 2024. "Recent progress in air traffic flow management: A review," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    6. Yong Tian & Lili Wan & Bojia Ye & Runze Yin & Dawei Xing, 2019. "Optimization Method for Reducing the Air Pollutant Emission and Aviation Noise of Arrival in Terminal Area," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-16, August.
    7. Li, Max Z. & Ryerson, Megan S., 2019. "Reviewing the DATAS of aviation research data: Diversity, availability, tractability, applicability, and sources," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 111-130.
    8. Winkelmann, Jonas & Spinler, Stefan & Neukirchen, Thomas, 2024. "Green transport fleet renewal using approximate dynamic programming: A case study in German heavy-duty road transportation," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    9. Chen, Shuiwang & Wu, Lingxiao & Ng, Kam K.H. & Liu, Wei & Wang, Kun, 2024. "How airports enhance the environmental sustainability of operations: A critical review from the perspective of Operations Research," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    10. Zhu, Xinting & Hong, Ning & He, Fang & Lin, Yu & Li, Lishuai & Fu, Xiaowen, 2023. "Predicting aircraft trajectory uncertainties for terminal airspace design evaluation," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    11. Hu, Rong & Huang, Mengyuan & Zhang, Junfeng & Witlox, Frank, 2023. "On the Matthew effect in a multi-airport system: Evidence from the viewpoint of airport green efficiency," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    12. Sun, Xiaoqian & Zheng, Changhong & Chen, Xinyue & Wandelt, Sebastian, 2024. "Multiple airport regions: A review of concepts, insights and challenges," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:120:y:2024:i:c:s0969699724001327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-air-transport-management/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.