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In this paper, we present a novel data-driven optimization approach for trajectory based air traffic flow management (ATFM). A key aspect of the proposed approach is the inclusion of airspace users' trajectory preferences, which are computed from traffic data by combining clustering and classification techniques. Machine learning is also used to extract consistent trajectory options, while optimization is applied to resolve demand-capacity imbalances by means of a mathematical programming model that judiciously assigns a feasible 4D trajectory and a possible ground delay to each flight. The methodology has been tested on instances extracted from real air traffic data repositories. With more than 32,000 flights considered, we solve the largest instances of the ATFM problem available in the literature in short computational times that are reasonable from the practical point of view. As a by-product, we highlight the trade-off between preferences and delays as well as the potential benefits. Indeed, computing efficient solutions of the problem facilitates a consensus between network manager and airspace users. In view of the level of accuracy of the solutions and of the excellent computational performance, we are optimistic that the proposed approach may provide a significant contribution to the development of the next generation of air traffic flow management tools.

The goal of Optimal Transmission Switching (OTS) problem for power systems is to identify a topology of the power grid that minimizes the cost of the system operation while satisfying the operational and physical constraints. Among the most popular methods to solve OTS is to construct approximation via integer linear programming formulations, which often come with big-M inequalities. These big-M inequalities increase, considerably, the difficulty of solving the resulting formulations. Moreover, choosing big-M values optimally is as hard as solving OTS itself. In this paper, we devise two data-driven big-M bound strengthening methods which take network structure, power demands and generation costs into account. We illustrate the robustness of our methods to load changes and impressive runtime improvements of mixed-integer solvers achieved by our methods with extensive experiments on benchmark instances. The speedup by one of the proposed methods is almost 13 times with respect to the exact method.

This paper presents an exhaustive study on the arrivals process at eight important European airports. Using inbound traffic data, we define, compare, and contrast a data-driven Poisson and PSRA point process. Although, there is sufficient evidence that the interarrivals might follow an exponential distribution, this finding does not directly translate to evidence that the arrivals stream is Poisson. The main reason is that finite-capacity constraints impose a correlation structure to the arrivals stream, which a Poisson model cannot capture. We show the weaknesses and somehow the difficulties of using a Poisson process to model with good approximation the arrivals stream. On the other hand, our innovative non-parametric, data-driven PSRA model, predicts quite well and captures important properties of the typical arrivals stream.

We present a model to describe the inbound air traffic over a congested hub. We show that this model gives a very accurate description of the traffic by the comparison of our theoretical distribution of the queue with the actual distribution observed over Heathrow airport. We discuss also the robustness of our model.