Robustness of Air Transportation as Complex Networks:Systematic Review of 15 Years of Research and Outlook into the Future

Air transportation systems are an important part of the critical infrastructure in our connected world. Accordingly, a better understanding and improvements in the resilience of the overall air transportation system are essential to the well-functioning of our society and overall sustainability of human beings. In the literature, network science is increasingly used to better understand the resilience dynamics of air transportation. Given the wide application of tools for network science and the importance of designing resilient air transportation systems, a rich body of studies has emerged in recent years. This review paper synthesizes the related literature that has been published throughout the last 15 years regarding the robustness of air transportation systems. The contributions of this work consist of two major elements. The first part provides a comprehensive discussion and cross-comparison of the reported results. We cover several major topics, including node importance identification, failure versus attack profiles, recovery and improvement techniques, and networks of networks approaches. The second part of this paper complements the review of aggregated findings by elaborating on a future agenda for robust air transportation research. Our survey-style overview hopefully contributes toward a better understanding of the state of the art in this research area, and, in turn, to the improvement of future air transportation resilience and sustainability.

Challenges and New Trends in Power Electronic Devices Reliability

Power electronic devices are expected to play an ever more fundamental role in unlocking the potentialities of smart power systems and in developing more electric ground and air transportation systems [...]

Energy-Efficient On-Platform Target Classification for Electric Air Transportation Systems

Due to the predicted rise of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in commercial, civil, and military operations, there is a desire to make UASs more energy efficient so they can proliferate with ease of deployment and maximal life per charge. To address current limitations, a three-tiered approach is investigated to mitigate Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) hover time, reduce network datalink transmission to a ground station, and provide a real-time framework for Sense-and-Avoidance (SAA) target classification. An energy-efficient UAS architecture framework is presented, and a corresponding SAA prototype is developed using commercial hardware to validate the proposed architecture using an experimental methodology. The proposed architecture utilizes classical computer vision methods within the Detection Subsystem coupled with deeply learned Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) within the Classification Subsystem. Real-time operations of three frames per second are realized enabling UAV hover time and associated energy consumption during SAA processing to be effectively eliminated. Additional energy improvements are not addressed in the scope of this work. Inference accuracy is improved by 19% over baseline COTS models and current non-adaptive, single-stage SAA architectures. Overall, by pushing SAA processing to the edge of the sensors, network offload transmissions and reductions in processing time and energy consumption are feasible and realistic in future battery-powered electric air transportation systems.

Analysis on Chinese Airline Network Invulnerability

Air transportation systems are often subject to failures or attacks induced by unexpected abominable weather or temporal airspace occupation, while complex networks have been springing up as a convenient yet efficient tool to represent and analyze various realistic complex systems such as realistic airline system. In terms of Chinese airline network formed during the spring festival timespan, structural empirical research and invulnerability simulation analysis against various deliberate attack strategies were made using complex network theory, where nodes and edges denotes domestic airports and direct flights between them respectively. The analysis results indicate: The presented airline network is a small net-work with scale-free characteristics, and correlation shows remarkable hierarchical structure and obvious assortative characteristics; The network shows obvious invulnerability under deliberate node attack, while shows partly robustness under edge attack even with obvious attack effects against various attack strategies.

MULTI-AIRPORT SYSTEMS AS A GLOBAL TOURISM PHENOMENON: A CRITICAL REVIEW AND A NEW CONCEPT

Purpose:The main objective of the present study is to shed light on the different dimensions and international experiences of the multi-airport system including the Egyptian experience in this regard. Methodology:The methodology of the study depends on the researcher's own critical review based on his scientific background on the phenomenon of multi-airport systems through survey in secondary and primary data. Findings:Finally, the study presented a new comprehensive concept of the multi-airport system. The importance and originality of the current research is to ameliorate the concept of multiple-airport system in light of displaying some of international experiences. Implications:The transition from single-airport to multi-airport systems is going to be a basic tool by which air transportation systems will be able to meet future demand. There are many experiences related to the failure and success of managing the multi-airport systems worldwide.

Conceptual design of PrandtlPlane civil transport aircraft

According to aircraft manufacturers and several air transportation players, the main challenge the civil aviation will have to deal with in the future is to provide a sustainable growth strategy, in order to face the growing demand of air traffic all over the world. The sustainability requirements are related to air pollution, noise impact, airport congestion, competitiveness of the air transportation systems in terms of travel time and passengers' comfort. Among the possible ways to allow a sustainable growth of the air transportation systems, disruptive aircraft configurations have been object of study for several years, in order to demonstrate that the improvement of aircraft performance can enable the envisaged growth. This paper presents the study of a possible novel configuration called “PrandtlPlane,” having a box-wing layout derived from Prandtl's “Best Wing System” concept. The paper deals with the definition of top level requirements and faces the conceptual study of the overall configuration, focusing on fuselage sizing as well as on the aerodynamic design of the box-wing system. This latter is designed through an optimization-driven strategy, carried out by means of a low-fidelity aerodynamic tool, which simulates the flow condition in the subsonic range and introduces corrections to take the transonic effects into account. Design procedures and tools are presented, showing preliminary results related to a PrandtlPlane compliant with ICAO Aerodrome Reference Code “C” standard, such as Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, whose wingspan is limited to 36 m. Activities and results here shown are part of the first phase of the research project “PARSIFAL” (Prandtlplane ARchitecture for the Sustainable Improvement of Future AirpLanes), funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Program, which aims to demonstrate that the PrandtlPlane configuration can improve aircraft payload capability, keeping their dimensions compatible with present airport infrastructures.