FACET: Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool

FACET ( Future Air Traffic Management Concepts E valuation Tool) is a simulation and analysis tool being developed at the NASA Ames Research Center. This paper introduces the design, architecture, functionalities and applications of FACET. The purpose of FACET is to provide a simulation environment for exploration, development and evaluation of advanced Air Traffic Management concepts. Examples of these concepts include new Air Traffic Management paradigms such as Distributed Air/Ground Traffic Management, advanced Traffic Flow Management, and new Decision Support Tools for controllers working within the operational procedures of the existing air traffic control system. FACET models system-wide en route airspace operations over the contiguous United States. The architecture of FACET strikes an appropriate balance between flexibility and fidelity. This feature enables FACET to model airspace operations at the U.S. national level, and process over 5,000 aircraft on a single desktop computer running on any of a wide variety of operating systems. FACET has been designed with a modular software architecture to facilitate rapid prototyping of diverse Air Traffic Management concepts. FACET has prototypes of several advanced Air Traffic Management concepts: airborne self-separation; a Decision Support Tool for direct routing; advanced Traffic Flow Management techniques utilizing dynamic density predictions for airspace redesign and aircraft rerouting; and, the integration of space launch vehicle operations into the U.S. National Airspace System. ! Research Scientist, Automation Concepts Research Branch Mail Stop 210-10; [email protected] ✪ Chief, Automation Concepts Research Branch Mail Stop 210-10; [email protected] ✝ Principal Scientist Mail Stop 210-8; [email protected] ✤ Principal Scientist and Task Manager Mail Stop 210-8; [email protected] % Senior Software Analyst Mail Stop 210-8; [email protected] Introduction The global Air Traffic Management (ATM) system faces the challenge of increasing system capacity and flexibility to accommodate traffic growth and user preferences, while maintaining or improving the current level of safety. In order to achieve these goals, new ATM concepts must be explored and evaluated prior to field-testing and eventual deployment. Therefore, an ATM system model is necessary for simulation evaluations of new ATM concepts. A variety of ATM system models have been developed by various organizations, many of them tailored to a specific set of applications. A NASA-sponsored comprehensive study on existing and required modeling capabilities for evaluating ATM systems and concepts is reported in [1]. It includes functional descriptions of several existing models such as RAMS, SIMMOD and TAAM. FACET (Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool) was developed to meet anticipated requirements for advanced ATM concept development and evaluation activities under NASA’s Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AATT) Project. Based on these requirements, it was determined that there was a need for a flexible modeling environment that would facilitate: (1) Rapid prototyping of diverse ATM concepts; (2) Modeling of new vehicle classes such as space launch vehicles; and, (3) Collaborative research and development efforts with other organizations. It is believed that existing ATM models cannot provide the high level of flexibility necessary for realizing all of the above three capabilities. This paper provides an introduction to FACET. It begins with an overview, and then presents details about the architecture and capabilities of FACET. Finally, the paper presents a description of several advanced ATM concepts that are currently at various stages of evaluation in FACET.