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Introduction
Avinor AS, the owner and operator of 46 Norwegian airports, planned a series of expansions for Trondheim Airport Værnes (TRD) in order to increase the capacity of the airport from 3.9 to 5 million passengers per annum. One of the planned measures is concerned with the expansion and redesign of the check-in and security area in Terminal A.
The plan for the new layout considered an enhancement of the check-in facilities to respond to future needs and the trend for increased use of self-service facilities. Thus the revised design introduced new common use self service (CUSS) check-in kiosks, a series of common use self service bag drops (SSBD) and some dedicated manned check-in counters for passengers who still need assistance with the check-in process. Furthermore, Avinor planned to expand and relocate the security screening area to a new building extension in the west of the terminal site.
In the scope of the planning process Airport Research Center was contracted to perform a simulation study in order to test and validate the intended re-design and expansion of the terminal with the objective to check the design for any possible bottleneck and thus to support the optimisation of the layout before construction started.
Project Services
- Kick-off meeting and data collection
- Development of a future flight schedule week reflecting the target capacity
- Preparation of input data for the simulation
- Model set-up of the initial layout and simulation
- Analysis and presentation of results
- Recommendations for layout enhancements
- Model adaptation and simulation of the revised and improved layout
- Analysis, results preparation and final report
Results
Airport Research Center tested the initially planned layout with various simulation runs considering random variations e.g. in the reporting patterns of passengers, in order to test the sensitivity of results and the robustness of the layout. The simulation was done based on a 7-day future scenario flight schedule week to consider a bandwidth of typical traffic structures occurring on different days (characteristics of scheduled/charter/leisure flights).
Avinor was provided with different key performance indicators such as expected waiting times or queue lengths, density occupation of different areas and extensive 3D screenshot and video material that allowed a clear interpretation of the investigated situation.
Recommendations could be given regarding an optimised layout, which shall result in a more robust layout and reduce the risk of potential bottlenecks and congestions. Based on the recommendations the design team Narud Stokke Wiig Architects and Planners AS revised the layout and Airport Research Center did a further simulation considering these changes. The simulation analysis clearly showed the improvements resulting in a smoother passenger flow and operations.
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