CSIRO is redesigning the airspace around airports making air travel more efficent for airlines and safer for passengers.

Optimising air space for safer skies

CSIRO's Optimisation in Air Transport Management team is developing new approaches for reshaping the architecture of the skies for safer and more efficient air travel for passengers, airlines and airports.

• 28 October 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Redesigning the architecture of the sky
• Understanding complex air spaces
• Modelling and managing risk
• Broome International airport project

Redesigning the architecture of the sky

Management of airspace risk has become increasingly important as air traffic flows grow across Australia and airports become more congested.

There is a mounting variety of aircraft in the sky all following a set of air rules, much like road rules, under a range of operating systems.

While rules and regulations were introduced after World War II have served well, airlines are experiencing increased airborne delays and inflated operating costs as a result of a now legacy airspace management regime.

As technology moves forward and airspace gets more crowded, there is a greater need for a new system that can handle the increasingly complex airspace. 

CSIRO's designs enable the development of new rules rather than relying on legacy rules created for a different operating environment.

Understanding complex air spaces

Major airports for commercial flights operate in what is called centralised ‘managed airspace’, where the air traffic controller tells the aircraft their speed, heading and altitude should be.

This can cause bottlenecks, resulting in delays on busy flight corridors such as Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne and possibly needing aircraft to hold in the air before landing.

Air traffic management becomes more problematic as more general and recreational aircraft as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) take to the skies – and not necessarily with a flight plan.

In regional areas, pilots are more free and need to "self-separate" aircraft rather than relying on air traffic controllers on the ground.

New airspace designs developed by CSIRO, models airspace as networks of aircraft, establishing new safety guidelines, and determining how an aircraft is to be controlled on approach and landing.

Modelling and managing risk

CSIRO's mathematical models use complex algorithms to test different air traffic scenarios under various risk levels to help determine the most optimal situations.

Our research is focussing on the engineering development of airspace needed to allow different types of aircraft to operate within it efficiently.

Our methods can help improve air traffic flow design and the efficiency of airports whilst improving safety and reducing wait times for landing aircraft. This improves environmental outcomes such as reduced noise and fuel emissions.

Mathematical modelling helps measure and understand the risks in air traffic safety in order to manage it in the most appropriate manner.

The CSIRO Optimisation in Air Transport Management team specialises in measuring risks such as:

• mid-air collision
• runway overshoot
• collision on the taxi-way
• management of fuel reserves.

Broome International Airport project

With a growing international tourist hub that has an increasing mixing of aircraft such as Boeing 737s and general aviation, Broome airport's management wanted to know their safety risks and what systems were required to manage their operations now and into the future.

Using unique analysis incorporating advanced mathematics, computer science, aerospace engineering and statistics, the team modelled one million different collision geometries to test whether pilots had enough time to communicate and to manage radio frequencies to avoid a collision.

The results showed there were 50 000 geometries where it would fail.

The research convinced Broome airport management they needed a ground-based operator in place to ‘fill the gap’ when pilots had to change frequency to stay in communication with each other.

The results also showed that an operator could work adequately from a site at ground level rather than in a costly control tower, saving several million dollars in capital and ongoing operational costs.

Find out more about CSIRO's work in Quantitative risk management.