Interactive Visualization for Analysis of Air Traffic Model

Abstract

This study attempts to develop an agent-based model to simulate aircraft movement considering an air traffic control system and to provide a simulation method for designing an optimum flight schedule. In this paper, we examined interactive visualization methods to compare simulation results with actual flight data, analyze the causes of air traffic congestion, and find clues to optimize the operation plan. Air traffic congestion is a complex phenomenon in which the macro behavior depends on the interaction of individual aircraft. In order to simulate this behavior, we used a cell automaton (CA) model, which was said to be capable of reproducing such phenomena with simple local rule settings. We developed two types of programs to visualize both the simulation results and the actual flight data. The first is a fly-through program to verify aircraft movements in a three-dimensional space from any viewpoint. This program enables instantaneous search and playback of time-series trajectory data. The second is a flight route analysis program to draw two-dimensional tracks based on flight data as well as display additional information, including time, distance, waypoint, and airport. As a result, we herein propose a three-dimensional visualization method to facilitate the intuitive understanding of macro air traffic phenomena by 3D-CG animation of aircraft movement at a high frame rate and provide a visualization system for comparing and analyzing flight routes by graphically displaying numerical data such as flight distance and current position of aircraft.