Demand Capacity Balancer (DCB)

Airport infrastructure is becoming increasingly constrained, more so the Airspace and Airside. New terminals and passenger solutions will not address these Airside constraints. A-CDM went someway to addressing this, but only provided a short look-ahead time to manage the day of operations focused around departures.

The European ATM Master Plan for “High Performance Airports” integrates a new air segment element with the existing ground segment of A-CDM to create a new “rolling” Airport Operations Plan (AOP). The AOP enables a step change for the airport operator to influence more Intelligent Arrivals, including Target Time of Arrival, as opposed to the first come, first served randomness of today. Moving away scheduled planning and buffers, to real time operations.

Demand Capacity Balancer (DCB) is the world-leading solution to provide the airport with a rolling predictive AOP. DCB is an advanced operational planning solution that enhances A-CDM by automatically processes various data such as global and local meteorological forecasts, flight schedules, live operation, historic performance, airport resourcing constraints, etc.

DCB create a digital twin of the Airspace and Airside operation, predicting demand and capacity, feeding a portal to create a rolling AOP in alignment with SESAR (AF2 & AF4) – a complete Arrival and Departure picture to Balance Airport Demand and Capacity from months in advance until the day of operations.

Supplementing DCB is an integrated stand planning module allows to build stand plans that are always up to date with the latest predictions, allow for alternative what-if scenarios that can be built according to user-selected optimisation goals and compared to each other to select the optimal and most robust stand plan.

DCB enables the user to create an AOP many days in advance, plus several what-if alternative plans. This includes the ability to provide plans to manage disaster recovery and recovery from adverse conditions, monitoring the created plans on the day of operation, applying and sharing tactical changes in response to issues as they occur (e.g. an emergency runway closure).

The AOP is automatically updated when data change, alerting the user in case relevant key performance indicators go outside their predefined limits, thus making the AOP not a static, but a rolling plan as required by the ATM Masterplan.

The AOP created by DCB is shared with the Eurocontrol Network Manager (NM). Best planned, best served now rolls via the real time AOP and seamlessly integrates into the Networks Operations Plan reducing the CTOT regulations in case of capacity bottlenecks at Airports.

DCB is operational at Heathrow Airport and was jointly developed with NATS UK, the air navigation service provider (ANSP) for the United Kingdom.

BENEFITS

• Improved certainty: More efficient allocation of airport staff, stands, and ground handling equipment
• Improved confidence: Fewer flight cancellations during disruption. Clarity for communities on noise.
• Improved control: The right flights at the right time. More passenger connections and fewer delays
• Improved capacity: Optimising runway, airspace, and airport infrastructure
  

DCB enables an Optimised Airport to Predict, Manage, and Control their operation.