A maximum-entropy approach to minimising resource contention in aircraft routing for optimisation of airport surface operations

H-S. Jacob Tsao and Agus Pratama

International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, 2011, vol. 3, issue 4, 372-391

Abstract: We propose a new application of information entropy and motivate this application with the problem of routing aircraft between their gates and assigned runways for optimising airport surface operations. In this context, the more clustered (i.e., the less scattered) the scheduled uses of taxiway links, the higher temporal resource contention, which in turn results in higher congestion probability and larger amounts of delays, wasted fuel and emissions. A measure of 'scatteredness' is needed. The connection between such a measure and entropy lies in the fact that the arrival times of the n aircraft that reach a given taxiway link within a given time interval partition the interval into n + 1 subintervals. The n + 1 corresponding subinterval-length proportions constitute a probability distribution, and the entropy of this distribution can be used to measure the scatteredness of the use pattern. Our numerical experience demonstrates the significant advantage of entropy maximisation in aircraft taxiway routing.

Keywords: maximum entropy; resource contention; measure; aircraft routing; optimal airport surface operations; optimisation; information entropy; aircraft gates; assigned runways; aircraft taxiways; taxiway routing. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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