Multi-objective airport simulation-based optimisation using DES and response surface metamodels

Abstract

The aviation industry has always faced uncertainties and vulnerabilities from all aspects, making planning and optimising its components quite challenging. This paper addresses some of these complexities by investigating civil airports that act as the main components of this industry. We develop a discrete event simulation (DES) model to estimate key performance indicators (KPIs) of such systems while considering both takeoff and landing operations. This model is then used to propose a set of metamodels that link the KPIs of the system to the input parameters through some mathematical equations. Using these metamodels, a multi-objective mathematical optimisation model is developed and solved by the well-known LP-metrics method to assist airport managers in identifying the best improvement direction for the system. The proposed approach is implemented on a real airport case study, demonstrating promising avenues by discovering improvements that could outperform existing methods by 70%.