SPADE - Supporting Platform for Airport Decision-making and Efficiency Analysis
Overview
Background & policy context:
One of the major challenges in the Strategic Research Agenda for European Aeronautics is that airport utilisation will be able to accommodate rising traffic without undue delays, while preserving safety, improving efficiency and service, and reducing the burden of operations on the environment. This implies that airport stakeholders and policy makers face challenging airport decision-making problems with strong interdependencies and with often conflicting objectives. To support them, there is not yet a user-friendly, fully integrated tool-set supporting strategic-level and tactical/ operational-level decision making related to airport (airside and landside) planning, development and operations, and allowing an integrated impact analysis.
Objectives:
The objective of the SPADE project was to develop a user-friendly decision-support system for airport stakeholders and policy makers. This system will provide support in airport development (both airside and landside), planning and operations, allowing integrated impact and trade-off analyses for a variety of performance measures (for example capacity, delay, level of service, safety, security, environmental impact and cost-benefits). It will address a number of important decisions (or 'use cases') regarding airport development, planning and operations via a pre-structured, pre-specified and guided 'wizard-type' human-machine interface in a single run, and in a back-office routine.
SPADE addressed Airport Efficiency, which was subdivided into two phases. Phase 1 aimed to develop a complete design of the decision-support system and to implement two mock-ups. By means of the mock-ups, a visual example of the system is provided to potential users. The mock-ups are instrumental in presenting what the SPADE consortium expects as a result of Phase 2.
Methodology:
The development of the SPADE system is based on the concept of 'use cases'. A use case addresses a specific integrated airport impact or trade-off analysis by means of structured paths, built into the wizard-type model. The system will integrate a specific set of use cases.
The activities can be subdivided into two main streams. The first stream deals with the development of a complete system design and the second stream with the development of the two mock-ups.
The development of the complete design of the system follows the standard life-cycle and consists of five major and sequential activities:
- elicitation of use cases. Stakeholders involved in airport planning, operations and development process are identified in order to elicit their decision-support requirements systematically through interviews and a workshop. The system’s decision-support framework is specified in terms of the use cases that are provided;
- specification of the system. This concerns the system's components, the use cases (from the first activity) and their implementation in the system, and the airport data model in which all data will be managed;
- assessment of the functional specifications of the system against the use cases. Any area where the specification does not cover the use cases is identified, and any enhancement required is implemented;
- design of the system. This concern the system and its components, including the mechanism for the integration of tools, based on the system specification and possible enhancements;
- assessment of the system's design against the functional specification. This includes the carrying out of the relevant corrections and enhancements to the design.
The second stream of activities concerns the development of the two mock-ups. Each mock-up is based on a use case identified in the activity above. The mock-ups aim to demonstrate computational capabilities, some functionality and the validity of the concepts behind the system. These are software implementations with the external appearance of the system, but not necessarily using a common platform for sharing modules in an integrated environment, or using a design similar to that of the final system.
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