Airports

Dissecting Lightning Strike Hazard Impact Patterns to National Airspace System Facilities in the Contiguous United States

He, Yiyi
Yue, Xiangyu
Lindbergh, Sarah
Gao, Jianxi
Graves, Chuck
Jasenka Rakas
2022

Lightning strikes pose a severe threat to the United States (US) National Airspace System (NAS). Although the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implements lightning protection practices and procedures to protect personnel, electronic equipment, and structures within the NAS, many lightning-induced outages still occur. To date we found that most research on lightning-induced facility outages has focused on understanding the physical processes of lightning strike effects on aircraft and airport ramp operations. Very little research has been done on examining the overall patterns and...

Climate Adaptation Strategies for California Airports will Require a Holistic Approach, Including New Governance Models

Lindbergh, Sarah
Reed, Jackson
Takara, Matthew
Aparri, Aidan
Jasenka Rakas
2022

Airports are complex social, technical, and environmental systems. Understanding their complexity is fundamental for advancing transformative climate adaptation policy. For airports to adapt, climate science must be incorporated not only into standards of specific equipment and facilities, but also into the air traffic network and its interconnected infrastructure systems (e.g., road access, ground-based communications, navigation, and surveillance systems). In addition, airport adaptation requires a shift in the way policy is designed, reinforced, and updated, which in turn relies on an...

Analysis of Controller-Pilot Communication Messages with Natural Language Processing

Jasenka Rakas
Alvarado, Matthew
He, Kezhi
Kim, Drew
Qu, Della
2022

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-3832.vid This study analyzes transcribed controller-pilot communication messages using a Natural Language Processing (NLP) method by exploring similarities and differences between miscommunication and regular communication messages. Transcribed messages are derived from 42 thirty-minute voice communication recordings from 33 sectors across five Air Route Traffic Control Centers. NLP functions such as sentiment analysis, topic recognition, and part-of-speech tagging...

Climate Adaptation Strategies for California Airports Will Require a Holistic Approach, Including New Governance Models

Lindbergh, Sarah, PhD
Reed, Jackson
Takara, Matthew
Aparri, Aidan
Jasenka Rakas
2022

Airports are complex social, technical, and environmental systems. Understanding their complexity is fundamental for advancing transformative climate adaptation policy. For airports to adapt, climate science must be incorporated not only into standards of specific equipment and facilities, but also into the air traffic network and its interconnected infrastructure systems (e.g., road access, ground-based communications, navigation, and surveillance systems). In addition, airport adaptation requires a shift in the way policy is designed, reinforced, and updated, which in turn relies on an...

Benefits of Satellite Navigation to U.S. Airports Using Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS)

Qui, Shi
Jasenka Rakas
2023

The objective of this study is to evaluate benefits of the ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) at large U.S. airports that also use the traditional instrument landing system (ILS). Landing operations are analyzed at GBAS-equipped and non-GBAS-equipped airports and airlines to determine if there is any significant difference in their performance. After comparing performance of airports (GBAS- and non-GBAS-equipped) and airlines (one GBAS- and non-GBAS-equipped), we draw a comparison matrix for the following flight performance metrics: block delay, Expect Departure Clearance Times (EDCT...

Life-Cycle Approach to Healthy Airport Terminal Buildings: Spatial-Temporal Analysis of Mitigation Strategies for Addressing the Pollutants that Affect Climate Change and Human Health

Greer, Fiona
Horvath, Arpad
Jasenka Rakas
2023

The potential environmental and human health impacts associated with constructing and operating terminal buildings is explored for commercial airports in the United States. Research objectives are to quantify: (1) baseline and mitigated greenhouse gas (GHG) and criteria air pollutant (CAP) emissions; (2) operational costs; and (3) climate change damages from terminal building construction and materials, operational energy consumption, water consumption and wastewater generation, and solid waste generation. An Excel-based decision-support tool, Airport Terminal Environmental Support Tool (...

Re-inventing Airport Land Use Planning in California: A Strategy for Updating the California Airport Land Use Planning Handbook — Recommendations for Update of California Airport Land Use Handbook

Jasenka Rakas
Lindbergh, Sarah
University of California, Berkeley. Institute of Transportation Studies
The FAA Consortium in Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR III)
2024

This report is written in response to the State of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Division of Aeronautics, relating to the need to update the 2011 version of the California Airport Land Use Planning (ALUP) Handbook. The purpose of this technical report and its supplementary materials is to provide a robust scientific foundation for the final Handbook update publication for airport land use compatibility planning, which will be created soon by Caltrans. In this study, optimized are visualizations of spatial distribution patterns of aviation accidents across 259 airports...

Reducing Emissions through Monitoring and Predictive Modeling of Gate Operations of Idle Aircraft: A Case Study on San Francisco International Airport

Jasenka Rakas
Achatz Antonelli, Pietro
Walia, Chanan
Rouzbahani, Parham
Gikas, George
2023

The use of airport gate electrification infrastructure in the form of ground power (GP) and preconditioned air (PCA) systems can reduce energy and maintenance costs, emissions, and health risks by limiting the use of aircraft auxiliary power unit (APU) engines at the gate. However, their benefits can only be gained when they are actually being used; otherwise, pilots keep APUs on to fulfill their aircraft’s demands for electrical power and air conditioning. GP and PCA systems require a large initial infrastructure investment to increase energy efficiency, and they are installed with the...

Formulation of the Airport Collaborative Gate Allocation Problem and the Bee Colony Optimization Solution Approach

Nikolic, Milos
Jasenka Rakas
Teodorović, Dušan
2024

This article formulates the Collaborative Gate Allocation (CGA) problem as a novel concept to reduce aircraft gate-waiting time and to increase aircraft gate utilization. The proposed CGA concept assumes voluntary collaboration and negotiation among airlines and airport operators, enabling them to share real-time information on gate-utilization and gate-sharing. The proposed policy is especially applicable to U.S. airports, as an alternative to exclusive or preferential gate-sharing practices, at terminal buildings that accommodate a large number of smaller airlines during periods of high...

Designing Seaplane Basis to Adapt Aviation to Future Sea Level Rise Scenarios

Jasenka Rakas
Zheng, An
Lindbergh, Sarah
Wang, Xiaoyue
2024

Sea level rise (SLR) will pose the greatest threat to coastal airports in the near future. Finding effective ways to mitigate or adapt to the impact of SLR is a challenge that many engineers and city planners have been addressing for a long time. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of seaplane bases and seaplanes as future modes of transportation. Although seaplanes were most popular in the early twentieth century and were eventually phased out with new land-based aircraft, they can potentially be of great use in future climate scenarios. In this study, we propose a...