Prediction of Operational Failure States at Airports by Means of Stochastic Transition Matrices

Abstract

Airports are complex multivariate systems where a large number of inter-dependent parameters contribute to the overall operational performance. Consisting of many structurally different subsystems, airports tend to lack functional transparency and thereby impede proper situational awareness for operational management. This is specifically critical in conditions where system malfunctions cause operational irregularities which require ad-hoc recovery action.Transition matrices are a mathematical description of dynamic changes between system states. They can be generated from a given set of state observations to reflect the dynamic behavior of complex multivariate systems. In connection with airside process monitoring initiatives as part of the Collaborative Decision Making concept, transition matrices can provide decision support to assess and predict critical failure states at airports. A decision support tool based on transition matrices may then be embedded into other applications used for the operationa...