Modeling and Simulation Support for System of Systems Engineering Applications

Chapter 10Air Transportation Systems

William Crossley and Daniel DeLaurentis

School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

10.1 INTRODUCTION

The air transportation system (ATS) provides many examples of system of systems (SoS). Airlines use multiple aircraft and coordinated crews in an effort to make profit while meeting passenger travel demand. Multiple competing airlines use numerous airports and share the same airspace as they also compete in the marketplace. Air navigation service providers coordinate multiple pieces of geographically dispersed technological and human infrastructure to provide efficient (and fair) service while maintaining an incredibly high level of safety. The airports themselves are also geographically separate, typically independently managed entities. Finally, in the midst of these multilevel, multiorganization dynamics, the passengers seek to meet their own needs for high-speed, long-distance transportation. By most definitions and descriptions of SoSs, these examples from the domain of air transportation indeed are examples of SoSs. Further, there are more than those identified here, there are strong interactions between and among many of them, and they are all subject to radical transformation from new technologies and/or policies.

Modeling and simulation (M&S) of the different SoSs (and, where appropriate, multiple interacting ones) in the air transportation domain should support decisions about design, planning, and ...