Research on Airport Scheduling of FGAP Multi-Objective Programming Model Based on Uncertainty Theory

Based on the current background of airport management and flight-gate scheduling in China, this paper takes Shanghai Pudong International Airport’s flight number of the rising and landing aircraft in a certain day as the research object, and it establishes an uncertain FGAP (Flight-Gate Assignment Problem) multi-objective programming model under the framework of uncertainty theory. Using genetic algorithm to solve the model, the specific flight-gate assignment scheduling plan is given. The research results show that the model in this paper can effectively alleviate the problems, such as unbalanced flight-gate allocation and excessive operating pressure of a single gate, in the conventional model, and make the allocation and scheduling more reasonable and efficient. Finally, we give the future application of uncertainty theory in finance and management, as well as the prospect of combining it with symmetry in physics.

A Multistakeholder Approach to the Airport Gate Assignment Problem: Application of Fuzzy Theory for Optimal Performance Indicator Selection

Airport gate assignment performance indicator selection is a complicated decision-making problem with strong subjectivity and difficulty in measuring the importance of each indicator. A better selection of performance indicators (PIs) can greatly increase the airport overall benefit. We adopt a multicriteria decision-making approach to quantify qualitative PIs and conduct subsequent selection using the fuzzy clustering method. First, we identify 21 commonly used PIs through literature review and survey. Subsequently, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process technique was employed to obtain the selection criteria weights based on the relative importance of significance, availability, and generalisability. Further, we aggregated the selection criteria weights and experts’ score to evaluate each PI for the clustering process. The fuzzy-possibilistic product partition c-means algorithm was applied to divide the PIs into different groups based on the three selection criteria as partitioning features. The cluster with highest weights of the centre was identified as the very high-influence cluster, and 10 PIs were identified as a result. This study revealed that the passenger-oriented objective is the most important performance criterion; however, the relevance of the airport/airline-oriented and robustness-oriented performance objectives was highlighted as well. It also offers a scientific approach to determine the objective functions for future gate assignment research. And, we believe, through slight modifications, this model can be used in other airports, other indicator selection problems, or other scenarios at the same airport to facilitate policy making and real situation practice, hence facilitate the management system for the airport.

Probabilistic Flight Delay Predictions Using Machine Learning and Applications to the Flight-to-Gate Assignment Problem

The problem of flight delay prediction is approached most often by predicting a delay class or value. However, the aviation industry can benefit greatly from probabilistic delay predictions on an individual flight basis, as these give insight into the uncertainty of the delay predictions. Therefore, in this study, two probabilistic forecasting algorithms, Mixture Density Networks and Random Forest regression, are applied to predict flight delays at a European airport. The algorithms estimate well the distribution of arrival and departure flight delays with a Mean Absolute Error of less than 15 min. To illustrate the utility of the estimated delay distributions, we integrate these probabilistic predictions into a probabilistic flight-to-gate assignment problem. The objective of this problem is to increase the robustness of flight-to-gate assignments. Considering probabilistic delay predictions, our proposed flight-to-gate assignment model reduces the number of conflicted aircraft by up to 74% when compared to a deterministic flight-to-gate assignment model. In general, the results illustrate the utility of considering probabilistic forecasting for robust airport operations’ optimization.