Prediction of Aircraft Waiting Time at Airport During Immediate Response to Disaster

Abstract

Air transportation is especially critical to the immediate response that must be provided after a natural disaster strikes a region. Airport operations are hindered by fluctuating waiting times across different operation types because of bottlenecks caused by unexpected amounts of aid goods, aircraft, and emergency workers. To address this problem, this study proposes a model for estimating the waiting time of an aircraft at an airport during the immediate response phase after a disaster. The proposed framework was developed by applying an open Jackson network with first-come first-served, priority, and mixed-queuing disciplines. These disciplines are compared through a numerical example based on data acquired from the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. The results indicate that the mixed-queuing discipline reduces the waiting time for higher-priority operators, with permissible waiting times for lower-priority operators. The results of this study reveal that various disaster response operations should be prioritized ahead of a natural disaster occurring, such that the waiting times for those operators involved in life-saving activities can be reduced.Aerospace 2019, 6, 40 2 of 17 the Red Cross (IFRC), the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have developed airport plans to enable international responses to regional disasters [4][5][6][7]. Polater [8] conducted a systematic literature review of airport disaster-management capabilities in non-aviation related disasters and emphasized airport capacity utilization in airports.However, as a point-of-entry, an airport will usually struggle to accommodate excessive demands within its limited capacity constraints, especially related to available airside space [9]. Furthermore, airport congestion causes additional waiting for aircraft within the airport [10]. An aircraft usually has to wait in the airport for a long time before starting its disaster response mission. The organizational complexity inherent to the tactical assignment of the tasks in an airport hinders humanitarian responses. In usual airside operations, an aircraft turnaround consists of five major tasks such as deboarding, catering, cleaning, fueling, and boarding as well as the parallel processes of unloading and loading [11]. Aircraft turnaround has been accepted as significant for airside operation, so minimizing delay propagation was analyzed in the previous study [12]. Due to its diverse composition of actors, this process is very complicated and therefore calls for Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), a concept that is accepted and has recently been shared globally [13].In a similar way, multiple stakeholders, such as medical helicopters, military, police, broadcasting, and others, are involved in different disaster response missions. Hanaoka et al. [14] determined that bottlenecks in an airport originate both on the ground and in the air for several reasons: aircraft are operated by different organizations, certain operators are n...