Modeling the National Airspace System

US Federal Aviation Administration

For the FAA, Ventana has developed and is continuing to expand the applications of a comprehensive National Airspace System (NAS) Strategy Simulator. The simulator provides a framework to evaluate infrastructure and regulatory strategy. To achieve realism without getting bogged down in massive detail, the model aggregates participants into communities, each acting in its own interests. The model takes a high-level approach to understanding when different system constraints become active, in order to evaluate potential policies for their system-wide effects. This strategic decision support system is used to assist the FAA’s COO transition to a Performance Based Organization, enable the analysis of policies that guide NAS strategic operations management, understand future revenues from alternate ticket tax policies, and understand the impact on cost of operations of different industry demand scenarios. In this work Ventana coordinates and integrates the supporting work of four major Universities.

The NAS Strategy Simulator was featured in the Winter 2004 issue of Public CIO magazine.

Joint Planning and Development Office

The JPDO, a multi-agency task force for the DOT, DOC, NASA, DoD and others with a stake in Aviation, is now using the NAS Strategy Simulator to lead the analysis of the portfolio of improvements for the Next Generation Air Transportation System. This tool tests and integrates the work of many detailed simulations.

For more information please see Evaluating NGATS Research Priorities at JPDO which was presented at the 2006 AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference.