High-fidelity models of airport and airspace capacity enable researchers to study modernization strategies that optimize capacity yet require volumes of detailed aircraft movement data. These datasets exist in the public and private realms but are highly challenging and cumbersome to collect in large quantities. In this talk I will present my real-time data scraping and mathematical modeling methodology to collect and augment real-time trajectory data. Using this data, I present an airport planning study and a study of airspace resiliency. I study the change in terminal area flows due to changes to airport infrastructure and the rerouting of enroute aircraft in the immediate aftermath of an abrupt airport outages in response to acts of terror or unpredictable weather. The combination of existing publicly available aviation data and real-time trajectory data allows researchers to investigate future airspace and infrastructure changes, as well as the predictability of the aviation system, in ways not previously possible. At the conclusion of the talk, I review my research program which includes working with federal agencies and airlines on valuing aviation system predictability, studying aviation environmental emissions and their impact on human health, and investigating the role of the recession and airline mergers on shifting airport demands in metropolitan regions.
Dr. Megan S. Ryerson is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of City & Regional Planning and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Ryerson received a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 and a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.
Professor Ryerson’s research interests are in the planning processes driving large-scale transportation infrastructure and the design of algorithms to support a resilient and sustainable air transportation system. Professor Ryerson has published 24 articles and is the winner of the 2016 Fred Burggraf Award for the Best Paper in Transportation Research Record, the Journal of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. She serves on the Board of Advisors of The Eno Center for Transportation, is a member of the Program Committee for the International Conference on Research in Air Transportation, and was appointed by the Secretary of Transportation to serve on the Airport Cooperative Research Program Oversight Committee. In 2015 Professor Ryerson was named “Woman of the Year” by the Women’s Transportation Seminar Philadelphia Chapter.