NEXTOR II

Mitigating Exposure and Climate Change Impacts from Transportation Projects: Environmental Justice-Centered Decision-Support Framework and Tool

Horvath, Arpad
Greer, Fiona
Apte, Joshua
Jasenka Rakas
2023

California must operate and maintain an effective and efficient transportation infrastructure while ensuring that the health of communities and the planet are not compromised. By assessing transportation projects using a life-cycle perspective, all relevant emission sources and activities from the construction, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life phases can be analyzed and mitigated. This report presents a framework to assess the life-cycle human health and climate change impacts from six types of transportation projects: (1) Roadways; (2) Marine ports; (3) Logistical distribution...

Deep Speech Pattern Analysis of Controller-Pilot Voice Communications for Enhancing Future Aviation Systems Safety

Jasenka Rakas
Sohn, Sungmin
Keslerwest, Lee
Krozel, Jimmy
2023

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-4410.vidIn this study, air traffic controller-pilot speech attributes and transcribed texts of voice messages are analyzed to gain insights into air traffic controller-pilot miscommunications. A Deep Speech Pattern (DSP) analysis is used to convert the speech audio into a spectrogram which is broken down into six sound features: loudness, articulation, tempo, rhythm, melody, and timbre. An initial analysis of these six basic features did not reveal enough...

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...

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 (...

Controller-Pilot Voice Communication and Intent Monitoring for Future Aviation Systems Safety

Jasenka Rakas
Vallioor, Vishali Kirthi
Krozel, Jimmy
Kostiuk, Peter F.
Mohen, Michael T.
2024

In this study, a set of models and software are developed to support Aviation System Safety Analysis tasks. Three primary models are utilized to conduct the following analyses: (1) Speech Attribute analysis, (2) Speech-to-Text analysis, and (3) Intent Inference analysis. We analyze air traffic controller-pilot speech attributes and transcribed texts of voice messages to gain additional insights into controller-pilot communication dynamics. Such analyses are integrated with situation assessment modules to identify any anomalies in flight trajectories. Key speech attribute patterns are...

Equity Assessment of Transportation Should Incorporate Materials, Supply Chains, and Targeted Mitigation Policies

Greer, Fiona
Bin Thaneya, Ahmad
Apte, Joshua
Jasenka Rakas
Horvath, Arpad
2024

California must build, operate, and maintain transportation infrastructure while ensuring that the health of communities and the planet are not compromised. In addition to vehicleemissions, supply chain inputs and energy use from constructing and maintaining transportation projects (e.g., roads, airports, bridges) result in pollution that contributes to climate change and impacts the health of local communities. Project-specific air and noise pollution can further burden vulnerable populations. By assessing transportation projects using a life-cycle perspective, all relevant emission...

Bayesian Network Model of Aviation Safety: Impact of New Communication Technologies on Mid-Air Collisions

Bauranov, Aleksandar
Jasenka Rakas
2024

This article presents a method of estimating the risk of a mid-air collision. The proposed method is an enhancement of the traditional aviation safety model - Integrated Safety Assessment Model (ISAM) - developed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and EUROCONTROL. ISAM is a mix of event-based models and fault trees that identifies causes of 35 different types of aviation accidents. While useful for conceptual understanding of accidents, the model does not handle human-technical or inter-system interactions. These drawbacks are especially evident when assessing safety impact of...

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...