Sensitivity analysis of mixed analysis-synthesis flight profile reconstruction

The high density of commercial aviation operations in Europe makes significant contributions to the emission of noise, greenhouse gases, and air pollutants. A key source of information which can be used in efforts to quantify these contributions is the OpenSky Network (OSN), which publishes automatic dependent surveillance - broadcast (ADS-B) data at time resolutions of up to one data point per second. This data can be used to reconstruct ground tracks and flight profiles, which can, in turn, be used to estimate local noise exposure, exhaust emissions, and local air quality. The use of such data in the reconstruction of departure flight paths is limited, however, by the lack of thrust settings and take-off weights. For this reason, a mixed analysis-synthesis approach was developed, in previous research, to reconstruct flight profiles by optimizing published departure procedures parameterized in terms of aircraft thrust settings and take-off weight, and departure procedure parameters. The approach can be used to reconstruct large numbers of flight profiles, throughout significant time windows, from open-source ADS-B data. Errors in the estimations of the parameters can lead to errors in the flight profile calculation which will propagate through to follow-on noise, fuel flow, and emissions calculations. In this paper, a global variance-based sensitivity analysis is presented, which evaluated the sensitivity of departure flight profile altitude to mixed analysis-synthesis flight profile parameters. The purpose was to improve understanding of the dominant sources of error and uncertainty in the flight profile reconstruction, and the influence of aspects of departure flight operations on resulting flight profiles. Analyses were presented for three different airports, Amsterdam Schiphol (EHAM), Dublin (EIDW) and Stockholm (ESSA) airports, considering departures of aircraft corresponding to the 737–800 and A320-211 aircraft classes.