Measuring Ground Delay Program Effectiveness Using the Rate Control Index

Abstract

The objective of Air Traffic Flow Management is to maintain safe and efficient use of airspace and airports by regulating the flow of traffic. In this paper, we introduce a single-valued metric for post-operatively rating the performance of achieved traffic flow against targeted traffic flow. We provide variations on the metric, one of which factors out stochastic conditions upon which a plan is formulated, and show how these improve on current traffic control analysis techniques. The core of the metric is intuitive and simple, yet leads to an interesting optimization problem that can be efficiently solved via dynamic programming. Numerical results of the metric are given as well as a sample of the type of analysis that should follow a low rating by the metric. Although this metric was originally developed to rate the performance of Ground Delay Programs, it is equally applicable to any setting in which the flow of discrete objects such as vehicles is controlled and later evaluated.