Airport Research Center

CAST Vehicle is a comprehensive fast time simulation tool for modelling and evaluating airside ground traffic. Developed for airports, airlines and ground handlers with a world-wide unique scope of functionalities, it takes the quality of strategic and operational optimisation to a new level. It shortens the planning phase significantly and provides the highest possible confidence for operational co-ordination. Working with a 3D multi-agent environment enables to identify the full optimisation potential and keeps the operational processes on the most efficient level.

CAST Vehicle has been developed in cooperation with Fraport AG and Fraunhofer IML (Institute for Material Flow and Logistics). The simulation system supports airports, airlines, ground-handling and air-freight companies in planning and developing the airport infrastructure and in optimising the airside ground processes. CAST Vehicle is a module of the CAST - family and may be used as a stand alone application or together with other CAST modules.

Key Features

• Multi-agent fast time simulation of airside ground traffic
• 3D model of airside infrastructure
• Traffic generation based on flight schedule and flight-specific load information
• Vehicle allocation according to individual dispatching strategies
• Sophisticated routing and driving behaviour features
• Powerful analysis features and 3D animation

Technical facts

• Runs on a standard PC
• Microsoft Windows required

Overview

With CAST Vehicle new concepts and strategies can be rapidly evaluated in scalable levels of detail, for example to identify bottlenecks, plan resources or assess a system‘s capacity. Various performance indicators can be logged for extensive analysis and can even be assessed during the simulation run via simulation-synchronous animation and online analysis functionalities such as graphs or colour-coding.

CAST Vehicle incorporates a sophisticated schedule-based dynamic traffic generation that takes into account flight load information (e.g. PAX baggage and cargo) as well as individual ground handler responsibilities and their dispatching strategies.

A powerful routing module provides automated and realistic routing. Vehicles find their routes considering e.g. blockings by taxiing aircraft and the actual traffic situation on potential route segments.

CAST Vehicle provides an accurate model of microscopic driving behaviour: vehicles accelerate, turn, change lanes and overtake according to their kinematic and dynamic properties and give way at road junctions obeying the respective traffic rules.

CAST Vehicle is based on state-of-the-art multi-agent technology and can be used stand-alone or as an integral part of the CAST product family. The program provides an user-friendly interface.

Further features of CAST Vehicle:

• Quick and easy modelling of airport airside traffic systems
• Integral environment: modelling, editing, simulating and evaluating of scenarios is performed in a single 3D virtual environment
• Powerful analysis features for in-run feedback (graphs, color coding, labelling) and detailed postprocessing
• Powerful import and editing functionalities for a rapid scenario set-up
• Flexible road network concept that allows easy modelling of network layouts with multiple lanes and complex junctions with automatically preconfigured right-of-way rules
• Generation of traffic based on a flight plan or stochastic distributions
• Dynamic dispatching according to individual strategies.
• Accurate model of microscopic driving behaviour including lane changing, overtaking and conflict resolution at junctions

CAST Vehicle offers a visual representation of every scenario element and provides intuitive access to its parameters:

• Ground vehicles and aircraft
• Road elements and taxiways
• Controllers and dispatchers
• Stand positions, vehicle depots and storage areas

With the batch run manager of CAST Vehicle you can easily setup multiple runs with stochastical variations and have them run automatically overnight. The powerful post processing tool CAST Log Analyser lets you perform extensive analyses of the simulation results.

• Planning of infrastructure
• Layout comparison
• Planning of construction measures
• Predict possible future bottle necks (next year, next week)
• Speed up planning and decision process

• Plan operations
• Ascertain new procedures
• Calculate cost of operations
• Determine required equipment
• Determine and evaluate staff planning
• Predict future resource demand

• Does the infrastructure provide enough capacity?
• Are there bottlenecks (highly stressed routes, intersections)?
• Is there enough parking space available?
• What are the best locations for parking and preparation?
• How will construction measures influence operations?
• How should an optimal traffic guidance concept look like?
• Which driving times are to be expected?
• How many resources (staff, equipment) are required?
• Which vehicle allocation strategies are beneficial? (trade-off between punctuality and resource requirements)
• How does the optimal operational concept look like?
• Is the layout of the infrastructure stable, i.e. insusceptible against failures and changes?

These are only some examples of the various tasks solved by customers or ARC with the help of CAST. Please do not hesitate to contact us in order to discuss your individual tasks and questions.

References / Customers

CAST has been developed by users for users with partners like BAA, Frankfurt Airport, Zurich Airport, Eurocontrol and Airbus. CAST has a steady / rapid growing world wide user community of airports, authorities, planners and consultants.

For more information please see the customers page.

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Purchase CAST or book ARC's Consulting Services

To ensure the highest efficiency ARC does not only provide the CAST software, but on demand also offers consulting services and support in the application of CAST. ARC strives for a long term cooperation and sustainable product maintenance.

For more information click here