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At least 73 records · Page 4

AIRNOISE: A Tool for Preliminary Noise-Abatement Terminal Approach Route Design

Noise from aircraft in the airport vicinity is one of the leading aviation-induced environmental issues. The FAA developed the Integrated Noise Model (INM) and its replacement Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) software to assess noise impact resulting from all aviation activities. However, a software tool is needed that is simple to use for terminal route modification, quick and reasonably accurate for preliminary noise impact evaluation and flexible to be used for iterative design of optimal noise-abatement terminal routes. In this paper, we extend our previous work on developing a noise-abatement terminal approach route design tool, named AIRNOISE, to satisfy this criterion. First, software efficiency has been significantly increased by over tenfold using the C programming language instead of MATLAB. Moreover, a state-of-the-art high performance GPU-accelerated computing module is implemented that was tested to be hundreds time faster than the C implementation. Secondly, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) was developed allowing users to import current terminal approach routes and modify the routes interactively to design new terminal approach routes. The corresponding noise impacts are then calculated and displayed in the GUI in seconds. Finally, AIRNOISE was applied to Baltimore-Washington International Airport terminal approach route to demonstrate its usage.

aircraft noise

Airspace Technology Demonstration 3 (ATD-3): Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR) Technology Transfer Document Summary Version 2.0

This summary document and accompanying technology artifacts satisfy the first of three Research Transition Products (RTPs) defined in the Applied Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) Research Transition Team (RTT) Plan. The original transfer, completed in September 2016, consisted of NASA's legacy Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR) work for efficient routing for en-route weather avoidance. This transfer updates the Concept of Operations document to a publicly-available NASA Technical Memorandum. Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR) is a ground-based trajectory automation system that continuously and automatically analyzes active in-flight aircraft in en route airspace to identify opportunities for simple corrections to flight plan routes that can save significant flying time, at least five minutes wind-corrected, while avoiding weather and considering traffic conflicts, airspace sector congestion, special use airspace, and FAA routing restrictions.

DWR

Sheaf Theoretic Models for Routing in Delay Tolerant Networks

One key to communications scalability is routing; as such the goal of this paper is to build upon successful efforts towards general routing for space-based networks. With the ever-increasing accessibility of space, the number of assets is increasing, which becomes a critical communications burden in terms of scheduling, spectrum allocation, and resource allocation. In order to mitigate these concerns, a true networking approach is necessary; a standard approach for space systems is Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN). For DTN to be a meaningful answer to the Solar System Internet (SSI) question, DTN must offer meaningful routing solutions that span the heterogeneous collection of links and nodes. This, in turn, depends on the general structure of these disconnected networks -- a structure that remains largely unknown. In ground communications networks, routing decisions are made based on several pathfinding algorithms working in tandem. In previous work, we modeled Dijkstra's pathfinding algorithm using sheaves and provided a more general framework for determining paths using sheaves over graphs. Continuing our sheaf-theoretic approach, we introduce here an expansion of our pathfinding sheaf to handle more general information, and we expand on additional pathfinding algorithms that can be represented using sheaves. Moreover, we demonstrate means of combining multiple algorithms into a single sheaf structure so that changes of scale can be presented in the language of sheaves. In addition, space communications networks rely upon radio transmitter antennas which can establish broadcast and multicast communications options, rather than the primarily unicast options available to wired networks. Last year, we also introduced a multicast routing sheaf for presenting broadcast, unicast, and multicast communications over a graph. Extending that work, we also introduce queuing sheaves so that we can blend these communications options together to simulate a variety of routing options across space networks. In addition, we include examples to illustrate the applicability of this abstract theory to routing in disconnected networks.

Robert Short

Secure Route: Roadway Risk Mapping for Transportation Planners

The secure transport of sensitive materials across U.S. road networks pose unique challenges for local, state, and federal agencies. Threats range from random events (e.g., accidents, medical emergencies, mechanical failures) to opportunistic or organized tactical assaults. Although the probability of such attacks is very low, the consequences of material loss to foreign states or terrorists can be catastrophic, qualifying these scenarios as “grey swan” events—low-probability, high-impact occurrences that are predictable but difficult to quantify. Traditional risk assessments struggle in these contexts, necessitating a shift toward subjective risk perception to inform planning. Risk perception in transport planning is shaped by various factors, including knowledge of adversarial capabilities, vehicle defenses, manifest details, and geographic features along the route. Geographic features such as bridges, tunnels, roadside elevation, and gaps in cellular coverage introduce vulnerabilities, while mitigative features include safe havens, police stations, and medical services. Temporal variables such as congestion, accidents, and weather further complicate route planning. Despite their importance, existing routing tools like Google Maps and commercial software do not explicitly account for geographic risk features, requiring planners to rely on personal familiarity with routes—a time-intensive, non-scalable approach. This work addresses these gaps by: (1) developing datasets that catalog geographic risk features along U.S. roadways, (2) eliciting risk perceptions from experienced transportation security experts, and (3) linking these perceptions to roadway conditions and geographic data. We implement these capabilities within Secure Route a novel mapping tool for classifying route segment risks associated with roadway conditions. This system provides transportation planners with an intuitive interface to assess and contextualize risk along potential routes, improving decision-making for secure transport. We present current progress in this effort and identify next steps.

Stewart, Robert [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000281867559)

Adaptive fault-tolerant routing in hypercube multicomputers

A connected hypercube with faulty links and/or nodes is called an injured hypercube. To enable any non-faulty node to communicate with any other non-faulty node, information on component failures has to be made available to non-faulty nodes so as to route messages around the faulty components. A distributed adaptive fault tolerant routing scheme is proposed in which each node is required to know only the condition of its own links. This scheme is shown to be capable of routing messages successfully as long as the number of faulty components is less than n (the dimension of the hypercube), and to route messages via shortest paths with a rather high probability. A second routing scheme based on depth-first search is proposed which works in the presence of an arbitrary number of faulty components; however, the paths chosen by this may not always be the shortest. To guarantee shortest paths, every mode must be given information beyond that on its own links; the additional information to be kept at each node for shortest-path routing is determined. Several examples are given to illustrate the results.

Chen, Ming-Syan

Annoyance caused by aircraft en route noise

A laboratory experiment was conducted to quantify the annoyance response of people on the ground to enroute noise generated by aircraft at cruise conditions. The en route noises were ground level recordings of eight advanced turboprop aircraft flyovers and six conventional turbofan flyovers. The eight advanced turboprop enroute noises represented the NASA Propfan Test Assessment aircraft operating at different combinations of altitude, aircraft Mach number, and propeller tip speed. The conventional turbofan en route noises represented six different commercial airliners. The overall durations of the en route noises varied from approximately 40 to 160 sec. In the experiment, 32 subjects judged the annoyance of the en route noises as well as recordings of the takeoff and landing noises of each of 5 conventional turboprop and 5 conventional turbofan aircraft. Each of the noises was presented at three sound pressure levels to the subjects in an anechoic listening room. Analysis of the judgments found small differences in annoyance between three combinations of aircraft type and operation. Current tone and corrections did not significantly improve en route annoyance prediction. The optimum duration-correction magnitude for en route noise was approximately 1 dB per doubling of effective duration.

Mccurdy, David A.

Isomorphic routing on a toroidal mesh

We study a routing problem that arises on SIMD parallel architectures whose communication network forms a toroidal mesh. We assume there exists a set of k message descriptors (xi, yi), where (xi, yi) indicates that the ith message's recipient is offset from its sender by xi hops in one mesh dimension, and yi hops in the other. Every processor has k messages to send, and all processors use the same set of message routing descriptors. The SIMD constraint implies that at any routing step, every processor is actively routing messages with the same descriptors as any other processor. We call this isomorphic routing. Our objective is to find the isomorphic routing schedule with least makespan. We consider a number of variations on the problem, yielding complexity results from O(k) to NP-complete. Most of our results follow after we transform the problem into a scheduling problem, where it is related to other well-known scheduling problems.

Mao, Weizhen

Evaluating GCM land surface hydrology parameterizations by computing river discharges using a runoff routing model: Application to the Mississippi basin

To relate general circulation model (GCM) hydrologic output to readily available river hydrographic data, a runoff routing scheme that routes gridded runoffs through regional- or continental-scale river drainage basins is developed. By following the basin overland flow paths, the routing model generates river discharge hydrographs that can be compared to observed river discharges, thus allowing an analysis of the GCM representation of monthly, seasonal, and annual water balances over large regions. The runoff routing model consists of two linear reservoirs, a surface reservoir and a groundwater reservoir, which store and transport water. The water transport mechanisms operating within these two reservoirs are differentiated by their time scales; the groundwater reservoir transports water much more slowly than the surface reservior. The groundwater reservior feeds the corresponding surface store, and the surface stores are connected via the river network. The routing model is implemented over the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Continental-Scale International Project Mississippi River basin on a rectangular grid of 2 deg X 2.5 deg. Two land surface hydrology parameterizations provide the gridded runoff data required to run the runoff routing scheme: the variable infiltration capacity model, and the soil moisture component of the simple biosphere model. These parameterizations are driven with 4 deg X 5 deg gridded climatological potential evapotranspiration and 1979 First Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) Global Experiment precipitation. These investigations have quantified the importance of physically realistic soil moisture holding capacities, evaporation parameters, and runoff mechanisms in land surface hydrology formulations.

Liston, G. E.

Route Monopolie and Optimal Nonlinear Pricing

To cope with air traffic growth and congested airports, two solutions are apparent on the supply side: 1) use larger aircraft in the hub and spoke system; or 2) develop new routes through secondary airports. An enlarged route system through secondary airports may increase the proportion of route monopolies in the air transport market.The monopoly optimal non linear pricing policy is well known in the case of one dimension (one instrument, one characteristic) but not in the case of several dimensions. This paper explores the robustness of the one dimensional screening model with respect to increasing the number of instruments and the number of characteristics. The objective of this paper is then to link and fill the gap in both literatures. One of the merits of the screening model has been to show that a great varieD" of economic questions (non linear pricing, product line choice, auction design, income taxation, regulation...) could be handled within the same framework.VCe study a case of non linear pricing (2 instruments (2 routes on which the airline pro_ddes customers with services), 2 characteristics (demand of services on these routes) and two values per characteristic (low and high demand of services on these routes)) and we show that none of the conclusions of the one dimensional analysis remain valid. In particular, upward incentive compatibility constraint may be binding at the optimum. As a consequence, they may be distortion at the top of the distribution. In addition to this, we show that the optimal solution often requires a kind of form of bundling, we explain explicitly distortions and show that it is sometimes optimal for the monopolist to only produce one good (instead of two) or to exclude some buyers from the market. Actually, this means that the monopolist cannot fully apply his monopoly power and is better off selling both goods independently.We then define all the possible solutions in the case of a quadratic cost function for a uniform distribution of agent types and explain the implications for airlines in terms of service differentiation.

Tournut, Jacques

Problem Definition and Solution Concept for En Route Constrained Airspace Problems

NASA's AATT Program is investigating potential ground-based decision support tool (DST) development for en route controllers and managers. NASA's previous work in en route DST development has focused on Transition airspace, where aircraft are impacted by constraints associated with the transition of aircraft from en route to terminal airspace. This paper investigates the problems associated with aircraft in non-transitional en route airspace, termed Constrained Airspace. A literature search was performed to catalog previously identified constrained airspace problems. The results of this search were investigated with industry representatives to validate these problems were significant in constrained airspace. Three general problem areas were identified. The first problem area involves negative impacts caused by a loss of airspace (e.g., activation of Special Use Airspace (SUA), weather cell formation, and overloaded sectors). The second problem area is the lack of identifying and taking advantage of gained airspace (e.g., SUA deactivation, weather dissipation, and sector loading reductions). The third problem area is unforeseen negative impacts caused by the acceptance of user routing requests (e.g., a route change into an area of congestion that negated the users intended benefit). Based upon the problems identified, an operational concept was developed for a DST to help handle these problems efficiently. The goal is to strategically identify constrained airspace problems and to provide functionality to support ARTCC TMUs in resolving the identified impacts. The capability lends itself well to TMU and Airline Operations Center (AOC) collaboration.

Green, Steven

Direct-To Tool for En Route Controllers

This paper describes a new automation tool for en route air traffic controllers, called the Direct-To Tool. The Tool is designed to reduce the time of flight and fuel consumption for aircraft flying in en route airspace. It provides each controller with the identities of aircraft in his/her sector, which can reduce their time en route by bypassing dog-legged route segments and flying "direct to" a waypoint closer to the destination airport. The Tool uses its build-in conflict probing capability to determine if the improved route is free of conflicts with other aircraft. The Tool's graphical computer interface enables the controller to enter a direct-to clearance by a simple point and click action. Because of its low workload and convenience, this method is strongly favored by controllers The Tool has been running since January with live radar data received at NASA from the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center. For aircraft operating in the Fort Worth Center, the Tool has the potential to save in excess of 500,000 in-flight minutes per year. A provisional patent application for this Tool has been filed. A field task in planned for the last quarter of this year.

Erzberger, Heinz

Space Act Agreement Maker (SAAM) With Electronic Routing System (ERouter) Developed

Members of the Commercial Technology Office at the NASA Glenn Research Center have developed an exciting new tool that greatly reduces the lead time in creating and routing Space Act Agreements. The Space Act Agreement Maker (SAAM) is an e-government Web-based system that automates the initial drafting of Space Act Agreements by technical and program personnel. SAAM also is used for editing and will be used later for maintaining electronic copies of all Space Act Agreements. During the initial drafting, the software prompts NASA personnel proposing an agreement to answer questions regarding the agreement. On the basis of the answers, the software selects from a matrix of NASA standard clauses to produce a first draft of the agreement. The draft agreement and information submitted by the NASA personnel are electronically routed to Glenn s Commercial Technology Office for review and, where necessary, editing. The final version of the agreement, along with any supporting documentation, is then routed for electronic concurrence/approval to the necessary internal review participants using the electronic routing system (e-router). SAAM was developed cooperatively by Glenn s Commercial Technology Office and Glenn s Office of Chief Counsel. Currently, SAAM is being evaluated by the NASA Headquarters General Counsel Office for use at all NASA centers. This system allows for the effective processing of Space Act Agreements for NASA s internal and external customers. Document control is maintained by a database. With SAAM s electronic routing, review times can be reduced significantly, allowing Glenn to more rapidly establish partnerships with industry. Prior to the creation of SAAM, it took several hours to draft a Space Act Agreement. With SAAM in place, the document can be written in about 30 min. Using the e-router also saves time in determining where the agreement is in the routing process. The document can be tracked easily, and delays can be avoided. Important research with industry partners can commence quickly after preliminary discussions have been held. The development of these products is in line with the expanding e-government initiative that is part of the Presidential Management Agenda. By using this product, NASA researchers can secure greater support from industry and academia partners. The Space Act Agreement Maker has been very well received at NASA Headquarters and at some of the other NASA centers as well. We anticipate that the NASA Ames Research Center will have the system in place very soon, and that some of the other centers will use SAAM in the near future. The General Counsel s office at NASA Headquarters has encouraged the Glenn team to develop a similar system for processing patent licenses. Find out more about Glenn's Technology Transfer & Partnership Office http://technology.grc.nasa.gov/.

Stauber, Laurel J.

Masked Proportional Routing

Masked proportional routing is an improved procedure for choosing links between adjacent nodes of a network for the purpose of transporting an entity from a source node ("A") to a destination node ("B"). The entity could be, for example, a physical object to be shipped, in which case the nodes would represent waypoints and the links would represent roads or other paths between waypoints. For another example, the entity could be a message or packet of data to be transmitted from A to B, in which case the nodes could be computer-controlled switching stations and the links could be communication channels between the stations. In yet another example, an entity could represent a workpiece while links and nodes could represent, respectively, manufacturing processes and stages in the progress of the workpiece towards a finished product. More generally, the nodes could represent states of an entity and the links could represent allowed transitions of the entity. The purpose of masked proportional routing and of related prior routing procedures is to schedule transitions of entities from their initial states ("A") to their final states ("B") in such a manner as to minimize a cost or to attain some other measure of optimality or efficiency. Masked proportional routing follows a distributed (in the sense of decentralized) approach to probabilistically or deterministically choosing the links. It was developed to satisfy a need for a routing procedure that 1. Does not always choose the same link(s), even for two instances characterized by identical estimated values of associated cost functions; 2. Enables a graceful transition from one set of links to another set of links as the circumstances of operation of the network change over time; 3. Is preferably amenable to separate optimization of different portions of the network; 4. Is preferably usable in a network in which some of the routing decisions are made by one or more other procedure(s); 5. Preferably does not cause an entity to visit the same node twice; and 6. Preferably can be modified so that separate entities moving from A to B do not arrive out of order.

Wolpert, David

Analysis of Convective Weather Impact on Pre-Departure Routing of Flights from Fort Worth Center to New York Center

In response to severe weather conditions, Traffic Managers specify flow constraints and reroutes to route air traffic around affected regions of airspace. Providing analysis and recommendations of available reroute options and associated airspace capacities would assist Traffic Managers in making more efficient decisions in response to convective weather. These recommendations can be developed by examining historical data to determine which previous reroute options were used in similar weather and traffic conditions. This paper describes the initial steps and methodology used towards this goal. The focus of this work is flights departing from Fort Worth Center destined for New York Center. Dominant routing structures used in the absence of convective weather are identified. A method to extract relevant features from the large volume of weather data available to quantify the impact of convective weather on this routing structure over a given time range is presented. Finally, a method of estimating flow rate capacity along commonly used routes during convective weather events is described. Results show that the flow rates drop exponentially as a function of the values of the proposed feature and that convective weather on the final third of the route was found to have a greater impact on the flow rate restriction than other portions of the route.

traffic flow management

The Critical Role of the Routing Scheme in Simulating Peak River Discharge in Global Hydrological Models

Global hydrological models (GHMs) have been applied to assess global flood hazards, but their capacity to capture the timing and amplitude of peak river discharge which is crucial in flood simulations has traditionally not been the focus of examination. Here we evaluate to what degree the choice of river routing scheme affects simulations of peak discharge and may help to provide better agreement with observations. To this end we use runoff and discharge simulations of nine GHMs forced by observational climate data (1971-2010) within the ISIMIP2a (Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 2a) project. The runoff simulations were used as input for the global river routing model CaMa-Flood (Catchment-based Macro-scale Floodplain). The simulated daily discharge was compared to the discharge generated by each GHM using its native river routing scheme. For each GHM both versions of simulated discharge were compared to monthly and daily discharge observations from 1701 GRDC (Global Runoff Data Centre) stations as a benchmark. CaMa-Flood routing shows a general reduction of peak river discharge and a delay of about two to three weeks in its occurrence, likely induced by the buffering capacity of floodplain reservoirs. For a majority of river basins, discharge produced by CaMa-Flood resulted in a better agreement with observations. In particular, maximum daily discharge was adjusted, with a multi-model averaged reduction in bias over about two-thirds of the analysed basin area. The increase in agreement was obtained in both managed and near-natural basins. Overall, this study demonstrates the importance of routing scheme choice in peak discharge simulation, where CaMa-Flood routing accounts for floodplain storage and backwater effects that are not represented in most GHMs. Our study provides important hints that an explicit parameterisation of these processes may be essential in future impact studies.

peak river discharge

Exploration of Near-Term Potential Routes and Procedures for Urban Air Mobility

This paper investigates routes and procedures for Urban Air Mobility (UAM), which aims to reduce congestion on the roads and highways by offering air taxi as an alternative to driving. The routes and procedures being explored are current-day helicopter routes along with different communication procedures that are available as tools in the near-term. Three different levels of UAM traffic were evaluated in the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) area. The current-day helicopter routes were modified to separate them from traditional traffic, and a Letter of Agreement (LOA) was introduced in some of the conditions to reduce verbal communications. We found that modifications to the routes and introduction of LOA helped increase the number of UAM flights that the controllers reported they could manage and reduce their communications, which made controller self-reported workload more operationally acceptable. However, the self-reported workload experienced by busy airport towers cannot be effectively managed via the usage of LOA and modified helicopter routes, suggesting there is an opportunity to re-think roles and responsibilities of the UAM system participants.

Verma, Savita A.

Multi-Flight Common Routes

Flights often experience large delays when they are routed around weather. Multi-flight common routes advisories provide delay recovery by suggesting time-saving re-routes for groups of flights whose current weather-avoidance routes have become outdated because the weather has dissipated and/or moved away. The multi-flight common routes tool provides time-saving route change advisories taking into account flight plans, wind fields, and the spatio-temporal evolution of predicted convective weather. A graphical user interface enables these advisories to be easily modified by a traffic manager for possible operational implementation.

ATD-3

Cooperative Clustering Techniques Applied to Contact Graph Routing

Routing in the space internet has to face many unique challenges - from unplanned disconnections and interruptions to predictable intermittent connectivity due to high network mobility and long propagation delays. NASA’s current approach to such routing is Contact Graph Routing (CGR), using a graph formed of prescheduled communication contacts to compute routes through the network. While this approach manages to tackle issues of connectivity and propagation delays, it is a global approach that requires continuous knowledge of the entire network. In a potential future Solar Space Internet (SSI) such an approach on its own cannot scale to large networks with thousands of members. In this presentation we propose clustering as a solution to CGR scalability. Clustering has been used in many networking problems as a way to subdivide the network and allow for localized routing and better scalability. Using techniques from graph theory and game theory, we explore various existing clustering algorithms and adapt them to the Contact Graph Routing setting. Finally, we propose a way to combine multiple algorithms to create a Delay Tolerant Clustering Protocol.

Yael Kirkpatrick