Title The Short-term Airport Gate Assignment Problem with the Uncertainty of Arrival Time
Year 2018
Degree Master
School Department of Transportation and Logistics Management National Chiao Tung University
Author
Summary With the development of the civil aviation industry, airlines need to increase their flight frequencies to deal with the increased demand, leading to a high density of flight schedules at airports. The average operation time of the flights at the gates, as well as the average gate idle time, is expected to be shortened. In case of flight delays due to poor weather or unexpected situations, gate operations and flight schedules will inevitably be greatly impacted, and serious inconvenience is incurred for travelers. Therefore, a sophisticated model, as well as an efficient solution algorithm, for the gate assignment decision problem under possible disruption is crucial for the airports from the aspect of service quality and operation efficiency. It can help effectively handle an unexpected situation within a short period of time and limit the change of the original gate assignment to the minimal.This study focuses on the short-term gate assignment decision, considering the basic relationship between flights and gates and the arrival time uncertainty associated with the flights. The objective is to minimize the number of gate changes and the total delay time of the flights. One of the key issues is the study is to take the flight arrival time uncertainty into account. Random scenarios are used to simulate the associated uncertainty and a stochastic programming (SP) model has been developed to generate the gate assignment decision. This study also has designed the suitable solution methods, based on some optimization techniques to handle large- scale problems.Based on the numerical experiment, the value of stochastics programming in this study is considerable. In addition, the gap between optimal solution and approximate solution in the tests of both problem sizes are within 5%, suggesting an acceptable solution quality. It is expected that this study will provide the instant decision support needed by the airport operations of gate assignment planning.
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