NASA SBIR 2003 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Metron Aviation, Inc.
131 Elden Street, Suite 200
Herndon ,VA 20170 - 4758
(703) 456 - 0123

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Dr. Robert   Hoffman
hoffman@metronaviation.com
131 Elden Street, Suite 200
Herndon ,VA  20170 -4758
(703) 456 - 0123
U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident: Yes

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
A fundamental component of traffic flow management (TFM) is the rerouting of aircraft to alleviate congestion in constrained airspace. An integral concept in the future of TFM is a more collaborative process in which TFM disseminates airspace constraints and the users react with a selection of a (possibly) limited number of rerouting options. With the advent of more elaborate and collaborative traffic management initiatives, the NAS operators are now confronted with a myriad of options in rerouting and delay absorption that they have never before encountered. The only decision support tools currently available to the airlines are flight planning tools, which choose an optimal route for an isolated flight given the physical properties of the aircraft and some forecasted winds. This completely ignores the effects of traffic congestion and, therefore, the potential intervention of air traffic service providers. We propose to develop a flight rerouting decision support tool for use by the airlines that will allow rerouting choices to be made in the face of forecasted airspace constraints and traffic congestion.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 150 WORDS)
The NASA Ames Research Center has designed the FACET tool to provide a simulation environment for exploration, development and evaluation of advanced air traffic management concepts. FACET is currently capable of modeling system-wide en route airspace operations over the contiguous United States. Part of the FACET mission is to model traffic flow management intiatives, such as the rerouting of aircraft around flow contrained areas. A rerouting capability that mimics airline behavior and routing preferences could be an integral part of traffic flow modeling.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (LIMIT 150 WORDS)
Several decision support tools are under development to help the FAA design control actions or to evaluate their impact. Metron Aviation designs and maintains the Route Management Tool (RMT) to allow users to choose reroutes from among a list of known departure routes, or coded departure routes (CDRs). The Collaborative Routing Coordination Tool (CRCT), developed by MITRE, is a graphical tool that allows the user to define flow problem areas, identify affected flights, and construct and evaluate proposed reroutes. Each of these tools would benefit from a core algorithm to perform flight planning under congestion.