DEVELOPMENT OF SURFACE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM INTEGRATED WITH CTAS ARRIVAL TOOL

Yoon C. Jung and Gilena A. Monroe


Abstract

The Surface Management System (SMS) is a decision support tool that helps 
tower traffic coordinators and Ground/Local controllers manage and 
control airport surface traffic in order to increase capacity, efficiency, 
and flexibility.  SMS provides common situation awareness to personnel 
at various air traffic control facilities such as air traffic control 
towers (ATCTs), airline ramp towers, the Terminal Radar Approach 
Controls (TRACONs), and Air Route Traffic Control Centers. SMS also 
provides a traffic management tool to assist ATCT traffic management 
coordinators in making decisions regarding airport configuration and 
runway load balancing. The Build 1 of the SMS tool was successfully 
tested at Memphis International Airport. This paper reports the 
recent development efforts performed to integrate SMS with the 
Center-TRACON Automation System (CTAS) Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) 
to improve its prediction accuracy for arrival traffic and robustness 
under modeling uncertainties. The preliminary analysis results 
performed on the traffic data at the Dallas/Fort Worth International 
Airport have shown significant improvements in predicting runway 
assignment, runway arrival time, and arrival demand.