Are regulatory and business changes aligned with key ATM objectives? (Introducing the Vista project).

How will different regulatory and business changes affect the KPIs of ATM stakeholders in the 2035 and 2050 horizon? Are the various foreseen changes aligned to obtain improvements in key indicators? Will trade-offs emerge from different policies to be implemented? What is the impact of technology changes on different economic developments?

Vista considers these questions and examines the effects of conflicting market forces on European performance in ATM, through the evaluation of impact metrics on four key stakeholders (airlines, passenger, airports and ANSPs), and the environment. The project comprises a systematic, impact trade-off analysis using classical and complexity metrics, encompassing both fully monetised and quasi-cost impact measures. Vista will model the current, 2035 and 2050 timeframes based on various factors and their potential evolution.

The factors modelled in Vista influence the stakeholders’ choices: prices of commodities and services, regulations from national and supranational entities, and new technologies are all part of a complex socio-economic system that results in evolving business models, passenger choices, etc. These factors are divided between regulatory and business factors. Business factors may affect technology uptake and economic changes. Regulations, on their turn, may act as enablers of the technological and operational changes, e.g., the Single European Sky regulatory framework, or may directly affect the performance of some stakeholders, such as air passenger rights.

The different factors considered have been obtained from a literature review of regulations, projects, technological and operational changes. Concerning the regulations, the different areas of the ATM network and regulations applying to them have been reviewed. Communications and strategies laid down by, or foreseen by, regulatory trends have been used to identify the possible evolution of these regulations. The main source for the business factors are the SESAR projects, in particular, the high-level goals of SESAR described in its Master Plan (Ed. 2015), as well as more precise information related to the SESAR workpackages. The expected impacts of operational sub-packages in SESAR will be used to identify the impact of these on the evolution of KPIs. Some more long-term R&D research activities are also considered, in particular to be used in the 2050 scenarios of Vista. Other business factors include the price of fuel, the business models of the airlines, and changes in demand linked to the socio-economic development of Europe. Regarding the latter, many factors will be considered as closely linked and the diverse possibilities of development will be significantly influenced by outputs such as the STATFOR forecasts.

In the Vista model, regulatory and business factors are classified between foreground and background factors. Background factors are grouped to generate background scenarios onto which the foreground factors will be tested. These background scenarios, identified below, define different possible evolutions for the 2035 and 2050 horizons and have been defined to identify the impact of the technology on different economic development scenarios.

Examples of foreground factors, the impact of which will be individually assessed, include: regulatory changes on passenger provision schemes, fuel charges, or the introduction of smart ticketing. Foreground factors can also be grouped in higher-level categories to identify the impact of different policies on the scenarios: environmental mitigation policies (e.g., emission scheme and noise pollution regulation), regional infrastructure usage (e.g., airport access, regional infrastructure development), passenger focus modifications (e.g., passenger provision schemes and reacommodation tools) and Single European Sky (e.g., 4D trajectory management, traffic synchronisation, airspace charges). The qualitative impact of the factors, both foreground and background, on each part of the model has been identified.

Vista will necessarily model all ATM phases: strategic, pre-tactical and tactical. Factors will have different impacts on these time scales. The Vista model has been created following these temporal layers. A scenario, defined as an instantiation of foreground and background factors, will be executed by the model. The strategic layer, will use an economic model to balance the strategic demand and capacity of the different elements in the ATM network and schedules will be provided to the pre-tactical layer. The pre-tactical layer will generate flight plans, passenger itineraries and ATFM regulations. These flights and passenger itineraries will be executed tactically using the Mercury model . Mercury model has been developed on previous projects (POEM , ComplexityCosts) and allow the simulation of flights and passengers itineraries obtaining not only traditional flight-centric metric but also passengers focus ones. See our next blog (August) for more information regarding Vista tactical layer. Being a stochastic model the output of the different layers will be consolidated to analyse the results and understand the horizontal and vertical trade-offs identified. Finally, a learning loop will be used to give feedback to the strategic layer on the metrics obtained and, based on the initial expectations of the model, to adjust strategic behaviour. This will ensure that, after several iterations, a stable and realistic realisation of the scenario is obtained.

In order to capture the impact of the different factors on the model and the evolution of the system, dedicated site visits and consultation with experts have been performed (see next blog entry for more details). The Vista approach and methodology was been presented at the 2017 World ATM Congress (7-9 March 2017, Madrid) and at the 2017 ART Workshop (26 April 2017, London).