Effects of Unplanned Incoming Flights on Airport Relief Processes after a Major Natural Disaster

TL;DR

This study uses an agent-based model to analyze how unplanned incoming flights affect airport relief operations after natural disasters, highlighting increased waiting times with more unplanned aircraft.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic agent-based simulation to evaluate resource strategies under information uncertainty during disaster relief at airports.

Findings

Unplanned aircraft have negligible effects individually.

Waiting times increase significantly with more unplanned arrivals.

Resource allocation strategies impact turnaround times.

Abstract

The severity of natural disasters is increasing every year, impacting many people's lives. During the response phase of disasters, airports are important hubs where relief aid arrives and people need to be evacuated. However, the airport often forms a bottleneck in these relief operations due to the sudden need for increased capacity. Limited research has been done on the operational side of airport disaster management. Experts identify the main problems as, first, the asymmetry of information between the airport and incoming flights, and second, the lack of resources. The goal of this research is to understand the effects of incomplete knowledge of incoming flights with different resource allocation strategies on the performance of cargo handling operations at an airport after a natural disaster. An agent-based model is created, implementing realistic offloading strategies with different degrees of information uncertainty. Model calibration and verification are performed with experts in the field. The model performance is measured by the average turnaround time, which is divided into offloading time, boarding time, and cumulative waiting times. The results show that the effects of one unplanned aircraft are negligible. However, all waiting times increase with more arriving unplanned aircraft.