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Toward System Oriented Runway Management

Decisions about what airport configuration should be used and when the configuration should be changed are currently made manually by personnel in the Air Traffic Control (ATC) Tower (ATCT) or Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON). Over time, each airport has adapted unique local procedures related to airport configuration management, creating a challenge for both studying airport configuration management and developing decision support technologies. At many airports, the airport configuration decision is based primarily on the weather forecast and historical experience. While configuration changes to respond to weather changes are relatively straightforward, when traffic demand motivates a configuration change, the change is often made in reaction to observing aircraft queues and delays, or not made at all, rather than proactively based on forecast traffic situations. Consequently, significant opportunity exists for automation to support airport configuration decisions that will improve airport capacity and efficiency. Moreover, NextGen technologies and procedures will cause the definition of airport configuration to expand to include how metroplex resources other than the runways are utilized. As the metroplex configuration decision space becomes more complex, the need for supporting automation will become even greater. System Oriented Runway Management (SORM) is a concept in which the configuration and use of metroplex resources are explicitly planned with a holistic perspective of the operations within the metroplex as well as the needs of the metroplex within the context of the overall National Airspace System (NAS). System Oriented Runway Management is also a significant new research initiative by the NASA Airspace Systems Program that addresses the need for automation to achieve the SORM concept. This paper introduces the SORM concept and initial research to develop automation to support airport configuration planning.