Vertiport Selection in Hybrid Air-Ground Transportation Networks via Mathematical Programs with Equilibrium Constraints

TL;DR

This paper presents a mathematical model for optimal vertiport placement and capacity in urban air-ground transportation networks, aiming to minimize traffic congestion and improve overall efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mathematical program with equilibrium constraints for vertiport location and capacity optimization, and provides a method to compute its global optimum.

Findings

Model successfully applied to Anaheim network with 400+ nodes.

Global optimal solutions can be obtained via mixed integer linear programming.

Results show potential congestion reduction through optimized vertiport placement.

Abstract

Urban air mobility is a concept that promotes aerial modes of transport in urban areas. In these areas, the location and capacity of the vertiports--where the travelers embark and disembark the aircraft--not only affect the flight delays of the aircraft, but can also aggravate the congestion of ground vehicles by creating extra ground travel demands. We introduce a mathematical model for selecting the location and capacity of the vertiports that minimizes the traffic congestion in hybrid air-ground transportation networks. Our model is based on a mathematical program with bilinear equilibrium constraints. Furthermore, we show how to compute a global optimal solution of this mathematical program by solving a mixed integer linear program. We demonstrate our results via the Anaheim transportation network model, which contains more than 400 nodes and 900 links.