Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Vista (Market forces trade-offs impacting European ATM performance)

Teaser

Vista, “Market forces trade-offs impacting European ATM performance”, is a SESAR 2020 Exploratory Research project (Research and Innovation Action) funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme in response to the Call Topic...

Summary

Vista, “Market forces trade-offs impacting European ATM performance”, is a SESAR 2020 Exploratory Research project (Research and Innovation Action) funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme in response to the Call Topic SESAR-05-2015 economics and legal change in ATM. The project consortium consists of the University of Westminster as coordinator, with partners: Innaxis Research Institute, EUROCONTROL, Icelandair, Norwegian Air Shuttle, SWISS and Belgocontrol.

The effects of conflicting market forces on European performance in ATM are being examined by the project through the evaluation of impact metrics on four key stakeholders, and the environment. Vista is also studying the relationships between three major regulatory instruments in Europe: (i) the binding targets set in the context of the Single European Sky Performance Scheme, (ii) the passenger compensation and assistance scheme (Regulation 261) and (iii) the European emissions trading system, plus the goals and targets set out in the EC’s high-level vision document for aviation in 2050 (Flightpath 2050). These instruments are currently not systematically coordinated.

The primary objectives of the project are to quantify the current and future relationships between a presently non-reconciled set of performance targets and (binding) regulations in operation in Europe, specifically:
• The trade-off between, and impacts of, primary regulatory and business (market) forces;
• The horizontal metric trade-offs within any given period;
• The vertical trade-offs between periods, particularly as many targets are not currently mapped from year to year, are discontinuous with other targets, or even entirely missing for given periods (such as, vitally, passenger performance targets);
• Whether alignment may be expected to improve or deteriorate as we move closer to Flightpath 2050’s timeframe.

Vista comprises a systematic, impact trade-off analysis using classical and complexity metrics, encompassing both fully monetised and quasi-cost impact measures. To achieve these, Vista models the current, 2035 and 2050 timeframes based on various factors and their potential evolution. These factors influence the choices of the actors in the ATM system: prices of commodities and services, regulations from national and supranational entities, and new technologies are all part of a complex socio-economic system that results in evolving business models, passenger choices, etc.

Some of these factors, foreground factors, will be analysed in detail in order to understand their impact on the system’s metrics. The others, background factors, will be grouped giving them predefined possible values to generate future background scenarios onto which to test the foreground factors. This approach allows us to model possible future evolution of the system while understanding the impact of individual parameters.

Work performed

Progress has been made in the core technical workpackages, in addition to more wide-ranging tasks that cover all activities (e.g. data management). The technical and scientific tasks carried out are summarised first:

WP2 Data management – covering all activities relating to data requirements, acquisition, preparation, analysis and integration, supporting WP3-WP6.
• Identification of relevant regulations and business factors that affect the processes/metrics;
• Definition of regulatory factors (and instruments) and business factors (and tools/technologies).

WP3 Market forces – addressing the challenge of identifying the major drivers of change in the ATM system.
• Selection of the foreground and background factors from the regulatory and business factors, with an indication of which phase of the ATM process (strategic, pre-tactical, tactical) is affected;
• Definition of background scenarios from the background factors that are reasonable from the stakeholder perspective and as a whole;
• Identification of model variables that are affected by the background scenarios and foreground factors, and how they are affected.

WP4 Evaluation framework – developing an existing, established framework model with the following layers: airline & passenger, ANSP, airport, environmental and foundation of framework.
• High-level model definition and platform description: the identification of key characteristics of the stakeholders to be modelled; the temporal and spatial scope; the metrics and trade-offs to be analysed and the modelling technique selected for Vista.

WP5 Impact trade-offs – focusing on the trade-offs between metrics.
• Refinements to the impact trade-off and new visualisation interfaces are under development.

In addition to the above technical tasks, there are the following project management and dissemination activities:

WP1 Project management – managing the project towards a scientific, technical and dissemination success.
• Project Management Plan;
• Sophisticated management information system.

WP6 Stakeholder assessment and dissemination – raising awareness of the project activities with relevant stakeholders, receiving direct and independent input from stakeholders and promoting project results.
• Dissemination plan;
• Public website;
• Presentations at events;
• Consultation with experts.

WP7 Ethics requirements – setting out the ethics requirements and their compliance.
• Clarification of five ethics issues.

Final results

There is strong stakeholder demand for this area of research. Both the Performance Review Body’s RP3 White Paper and comments received after a first consultation with stakeholders emphasise the importance of better understanding the interdependencies between the KPAs and KPIs (even KPIs within KPAs), on which further work is required. Some view that the trade-offs need to be explored at the state, not EU, level, due to heterogeneity. Indicators in the ATM Master Plan and the SES Performance Scheme differ. Several major stakeholders would like to see a clearer mapping between SESAR deployment and the (binding) SES Performance Scheme targets.

An expected impact of Vista is to be able to support the ATM industry to better and more reactively adapt to changes in its business, operational and policy environment, through a better understanding of the future key performance area roadmap and interactions between performance areas. This will reduce the risk of future, performance misalignment and unforeseen consequences, and improve the potential of implementing synergistic targets and cost-efficient policy and regulatory measures.

Key impacts regarding specific contributions to active ATM performance-driven assessment programmes include:
• Contributing to, and extending the scope of, the gap analysis set as a goal of the Network Strategy Plan;
• Detecting conflicts and unintended consequences likely to occur within and between the SES high-level goals, the Strategic Performance Objectives of the ATM Master Plan, and the SES Performance Scheme (particularly for RP3 and beyond);
• Contributing to driving quantified rather than the reportedly “conceptual” trade-off assessments in FAB Performance Plans, as required by the Performance Regulation;
• Providing extended insights regarding metric trade-offs (horizontally and vertically) for future editions of the ATM Master Plan and SES Performance Scheme planning horizons.

The insights gained through the project’s approach will also highlight research needs towards the four-hour door-to-door goal formulated by ACARE.

Website & more info

More info: http://vista-eu.com.