Geometric Algorithms for Optimal Airspace Design and Air Traffic Controller Workload Balancing

The National Airspace System (NAS) is designed to accommodate a large number of flights over North America. For purposes of workload limitations for air traffic controllers, the airspace is partitioned into approximately 600 sectors; each sector is observed by one or more controllers. In order to satisfy workload limitations for controllers, it is important that sectors be designed carefully according to the traffic patterns of flights, so that no sector becomes overloaded. We formulate and study the airspace sectorization problem from an algorithmic point of view, modeling the problem of optimal sectorization as a geometric partition problem with constraints. The novelty of the problem is that it partitions data consisting of trajectories of moving points, rather than static point set partitioning that is commonly studied. First, we formulate and solve the 1D version of the problem, showing how to partition a line into "sectors" (intervals) according to historical trajector...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ALENEX
• Authors: Amitabh Basu, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Girishkumar Sabhnani
• Keywords: Airspace Sectorization Problem, ALENEX 2008, Algorithms, National Airspace System, Workload Limitations