Dynamically Generating Operationally Acceptable Route Alternatives Using Simulated Annealing

Abstract

This paper presents a simulated annealing (SA) methodology for defining operationally acceptable route alternatives for flights impacted by weather. By dynamically generating route alternatives that inherently possess traits amenable to traffic managers and users, more efficient use of the airspace can be realized. This paper explores the use of SA to provide quality solutions quickly and to capture additional route alternative options, such as ground delay. For comparison, a k-shortest path approach and an ad hoc heuristic search approach have also been employed to generate reroutes and the results show that SA indeed provides competitive alternatives to the k-shortest path approach and improved alternatives over the heuristic search procedure. Furthermore, SA can potentially generate these alternatives with less computation effort than the k-shortest path approach and, therefore, represents a desirable method for generating alternate flight paths.