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A new approach for modeling airport surfaces and terminal airspace, collectively referre d to as terminal areas, and traffic movement is presented. The approach supports description of the geometry of gates, taxiways, and arrival and departure routes with multiple levels of fidelity. Each terminal area model consists of a set of nodes and link s that the user connects to form a network. Nodes model gates, taxi intersections, runway thresholds, metering fixes, and other points of interest. Links model taxiways, departure and arrival routes, and aircraft transit from one node to the next. In addit ion to modeling the geometry of terminal areas, the approach supports evaluation of alternative concepts for managing terminal area traffic. Models of these concepts are decoupled, via an interface, from those of terminal areas and traffic movement. The in terface contains a set of generic functions that can be used by models of any air traffic management concept to monitor and to control aircraft passing through terminal areas.

The Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES) is a non-real-time, computer simulation of local, regional and national aircraft operations from gate departure to gate arrival. The overarching objective is to provide a flexible National Airspace System (NAS) simulation and modeling environment that can assess the impact of new NAS tools, concepts, and architectures, including those that represent a significant departure from the existing NAS operational paradigm. Two of the major development goals of ACES are the ability to configure simulations that target specific analysis needs and the ability to model the interactions of the numerous command and control entities that are part of current NAS operations and in future operational concepts. ACES development has been ongoing for several years, with the first version of ACES, Build 1, being delivered in March 2003. The most recent version of ACES, Build 4, was released in December 2005. This paper serves as overview to the features and capabilities of ACES Build 4 and the ways it differs from previous versions. A number of tools for preparing ACES scenarios and analyzing ACES outputs are also described to give potential users an understanding of how ACES can be used.