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Refinement and enhancement of an influence-model-based weather-impact simulator

Abstract:

Strategic air traffic management requires characterization of possible weather futures and their impacts on traffic flows and congestion management actions. In this article, we refine and enhance a promising tool for stochastic simulation of spatio-temporal weather impact in the National Airspace System that uses a stochastic automaton known as the influence model to generate many weather-impact futures or scenarios while statistically matching probabilistic weather forecasts. Here, we describe refinement of the simulator to use estimates of storm-motion direction based on wind forecasts. We also begin to discuss enhancement of the simulator toward prediction of terminal-area weather impacts in addition to weather impacts on en-route capacities. As a first step toward developing a predictor for terminal-area impacts, we study the dependence of airport arrival and departure rates (AARs and ADRs) at particular times on concurrent cloud-ceiling and wind conditions, as well as on AARs/ADRs at earlier times. © 2012 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.