Emergent Behaviour of Trajectory Based Operations Under Very High En-route Traffic Demand

Effective collaboration between planning controller, tactical controller and pilots in handling various uncertainties and hazards is the result of decades of evolutionary development. The forthcoming paradigm shift to Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) requires a similarly effective collaboration between the TBO layer and a tactical layer. Through agent-based modelling and simulation the authors have recently shown that in a pure airborne self-separation environment these two layers together can yield remarkably positive emergent behaviour in managing uncertainties and hazards, as a result of which very high en-route traffic demands can safely be accommodated. The current paper addresses the question if similarly good emergent behaviour is feasible with a ground based TBO design. The key findings are twofold. A negative finding is that ground-based TBO is not providing the remarkably positive emergent behaviours of pure airborne TBO. Though a positive finding is that ground-based TBO has the potential to safely accommodate high en route traffic demands.