The aim of this Faraday Partnership project is to develop powerful and robust algorithms for the sequencing and scheduling of airport runways. A range of meta-heuristic approaches will be investigated, and methods developed for handling the complexities of the physical manoeuvring and the uncertainty inherent in the problem. Runways are a critical bottleneck in the air transport system and using them with maximum efficiency is a key objective for air traffic control.

Project staff and support

Jason Atkin (Postgraduate Faraday Associate, University of Nottingham)
Edmund Burke (Academic supervisor, University of Nottingham)
John Greenwood (Industrial supervisor, NATS)
Melvin Brown (Technology Translator, Smith Institute)

This project is being carried out at the University of Nottingham, in conjunction with NATS. It is supported by an EPSRC industrial CASE award, made available through the Faraday Partnership for Industrial Mathematics. Start date: October 2003; duration: 3 years.