Multi-objective Collaborative Trajectory Deconfliction Incorporating Equity and Airline Priorities

Abstract

In order to facilitate collaborative decision-making in the Trajectory-Based Operation context, a strategic collaborative trajectory deconfliction method in Free Route Airspace is proposed. To achieve good trade-off between the objectives of safety, efficiency and equity, a multi-objective nonlinear integer model is formulated for the trajectory deconfliction problem by modifying the user-preferred trajectories with the combination of ground delay, rerouting and flight level allocation maneuvers. The Gini coefficient-based metric is introduced to quantify the inter-airline equity, and the airline priorities are incorporated in the model with the maximum allowed extra operation cost of each flight. Considering the large-scale and multi-objective characteristics of the problem, a decomposition-based memetic algorithm hybridized with local search operators is proposed. To balance the exploitation and exploration of the search process, A special hybridization scheme is employed for the setting of local search intensity and frequency. A traffic scenario in western China airspace with several free-routing sectors is used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed collaborative trajectory deconfliction method can provide high quality solutions to decision support in strategic trajectories planning.