A study of capacity regulations to define European air traffic management network states

The European Air Traffic Management Network is unique in its complexity due to numerous stakeholders, airspace configurations and accommodated traffic volumes. Such complexity challenges both tactical visibility and network resiliency in general. Therefore, we review different perspectives of resiliency and robustness to explore advantages of performance variability in understanding network states. The methodology is based on capturing emergent disruptions as drivers of performance variability. We claim that capacity regulations reveal restorative mechanisms for tactical planning. Consequently, we conduct statistical evaluations to provide quantitative measures for network state definitions. The methodology is even able to distinguish non-nominal disruptions to either crisis or critical states. The proposed approach is then demonstrated by a data sample covering six months. Furthermore, to assess the severity of non-nominal states, we estimate probability distributions for different regulation types. The study is concluded by addressing long-term network resiliency based on estimated probability distributions.