Environment

Autonomous UAV-Based Structural Damage Exploration Platform for Post-Disaster Reconnaissance

Peng, Xin
Su, Gaofeng
Folk, Benjamin
Chen, ZhiQiang
Raja Sengupta
2024

Rapid structural health inspection process is essential for post-disaster reconnaissance.
Nowadays, visual inspection still dominates the practice, which is time-consuming, expensive,
and unsafe. To reduce labor costs and guarantee personnel safety, we develop a fully
autonomous UAV-based structural damage exploration platform that explores and rebuilds post disaster environment maps with limited prior information. As a result, environment maps can be
used for further damage detection and risk evaluation. The proposed platform implements a
closed-loop control strategy...

A Simulation-Optimization Framework for Developing Wind-Resilient AAM Networks

Onat, Emin Burak
Cao, Shangqing
Rizwan, Raiyan
Jiang, Xuan
Mark Hansen
Raja Sengupta
Chakrabarty, Anjan
2024

Environmental factors pose a significant challenge to the operational efficiency and safety of advanced air mobility (AAM) networks. This paper presents a simulation-optimization framework that dynamically integrates wind variability into AAM operations. We employ a nonlinear charging model within a multi-vertiport environment to optimize fleet size and scheduling. Our framework assesses the impact of wind on operational parameters, providing strategies to enhance the resilience of AAM ecosystems. The results demonstrate that wind conditions exert significant influence on fleet size even...

Economic Impact of a Lightning Strike–Induced Outage of Air Traffic Control Tower: Case Study of Baltimore–Washington International Airport

Ding, Wenzhe
Jasenka Rakas
2015

This research investigates how lightning strike–induced outages of airport infrastructure and facilities affect airport performance from an economic perspective, using Baltimore (Maryland)–Washington (D.C.) Thurgood Marshall International (BWI) Airport as a case study. On September 12, 2013, lightning struck within 300 m of the air traffic control (ATC) tower at BWI, causing injury and ATC tower and airport closures. The study findings reveal that the economic losses of the outage-related delays from that single event were almost five times higher than the ATC tower refurbishment that was...

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...

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...

Implications of Wind Changes and Cross Wind Hazard Exposures at California Airports for Regional Air Mobility

Jasenka Rakas
Hu, Yingjie
Lindbergh, Sarah
2024

California has a large number of public airports, including single-runway general aviation airports and small commercial airports. Because of anticipated changes in future temperature and precipitation in California (CA) and their effect on airports, our study raises a related question: will airports in CA experience any significant changes in wind direction and speed? This issue is especially important to address at single-runway airports where the occurrence of crosswinds exceed 10.5kn. Under such crosswind conditions, it is not safe for smaller/lighter aircraft to land and take-off....

Trajectory-based Air Traffic Management (TB-ATM) under Weather Uncertainty

Nilim, Arnab
Ghaoui, Laurent El
Mark Hansen
Duong, Vu
2001

Explosive growth of commercial air travel poses great challenges to air traffic management and causes increasing delays. Much of the delay is weather induced. The traditional routing strategy, which consists of an aircraft under a predicted storm avoiding the bad weather zone completely, is too conservative. One way to reduce delays caused by enroute weather is to take a less conservative route, risking higher delay to attain a better expected delay, instead of avoiding the bad weather zone completely. In order to implement this strategy, one approach involves shifting the current airspace-...

National Algorithms for Determining Stocking Class, Stand Size Class, and Forest Type for Forest Inventory and Analysis Plots

Arner, Stanford L
Woudenberg, Sharon
Waters, Shirley
Vissage, John
MacLean, MacLean
Thompson, Mike
Mark Hansen
2001

Procedures to assign stocking values to individual trees, and forest type, stand size, and stocking class to all Forest Inventory and Analysis plots nationwide are presented. The stocking values are assigned using species specific functions of diameter developed from normal yield tables and stocking charts. These algorithms will be included as part of the set of standardized procedures being developed by Forest Inventory and Analysis that will result in consistent estimates without regard to political boundaries.

Influence of Capacity Constraints on Airline Fleet Mix

Mark Hansen
Gosling, Geoffrey D.
Margulici, Jean-David
Wei, Wen-Bin
2001

This report documents the findings of research sponsored by the Los Angeles World Airports to examine the influence of airport capacity constraints on airline fleet mix and to explore the potential effects of policy options to influence airlines to use larger aircraft types and thereby accommodate growth in passenger or cargo demand without a corresponding increase in the number of aircraft operations. This issue is of growing importance at many major airports in the United States and indeed around the world, as a steadily increasing demand for air transportation has resulted in volumes of...

Authors’ Response to Beuthe’s Comment on “An Aggregate Demand Model for Air Passenger Traffic in the Hub-and-Spoke Network.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

Mark Hansen
Wei, Wenbin
2006

Multivariate statistical analysis is used to estimate the impacts of a major capacity expansion at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The model relates the Daily Flight Time Index (DFTI) to demand, weather, origin airport congestion, and the expansion itself. The effect of the capacity expansion on DFTI is found to depend strongly on visibility. On average, the index in the post-expansion period is 1.3min less as a consequence of investment. This change includes a larger reduction in departure delay that is offset by an increase in taxi time. Moreover, the reduction caused by the...