A template-based approach to Dynamic Airspace Configuration in presence of weather

Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC) is an operational paradigm which is aimed at transforming the current, predominantly static and structured, airspace design (configuration) to airspace structure capable of morphing dynamically while taking into consideration user demand and a range of constraints. The dynamic airspace structure is needed to ensure safety while improving efficiency of the airspace operations, thereby resulting in higher (preferably maximum) benefits to the stakeholders. Numerous DAC approaches have been developed in the past. Primarily, these approaches focused on DAC in presence of variation in the traffic levels. Although weather influences airspace capacity, it has been only recently that the weather constraint has been considered explicitly in the DAC algorithms. This paper introduces a three phased framework for the template-based approach to DAC in the presence of weather. One of the three phases is an offline phase, intended to better accommodate training requirements of air traffic controllers, and the remaining two are online phases, designed to augment sectorization to better fit the actual weather/traffic scenario. Results of numerical tests show benefits of this approach over the current operational paradigm.