Short term aircraft conflict resolution using penalty-based optimization approach

With the developments in technology and aviation, the air traffic density all over the world is increasing day by day. Depending on the increasing number of aircraft, it is necessary to provide a safe and effective air traffic management that responds to the Air Traffic Management (ATM) demands. Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) are at the center of air traffic management in terms of their duties and responsibilities. Flight safety is the most important issue in air traffic management. The main duty of ATCs is to ensure flight safety for the air traffic they are responsible for. One of the crucial issues that jeopardize flight safety in air traffic management is conflicts that may occur between aircraft. In the event of a possible conflict between aircraft, controllers should take the most effective conflict resolution action as soon as possible. Recently, studies have been carried out on decision support tools that can assist controllers in the decision process of determining the conflict resolution method. The main subject of this thesis is the research and development of a methodology for the resolution of conflicts between conflicting aircraft. In this study, conflict detection and resolution are evaluated in terms of air traffic management and considered as an optimization problem that minimizes the deviation from the original route of aircraft and the controller workload, taking into account the safety constraints in terms of flight safety. In the solution of the problem, Penalty-Based Conflict Resolution Methodology (PBCRM), which applies a predefined rule set in conflict resolution according to the conflict geometries of aircraft, was used. The methodology has been tested with conflict scenarios generated by using BlueSky ATC simulator environment and randomly generated conflict scenarios. PBCRM methodology has found solutions to conflicts with a success rate of 83% by using vectoring and vertical level change methods for different scenarios including complex and heavy traffic. PBCRM has taken into consideration other aircraft, prohibited areas and minimum safe flight altitude in the production of solutions.