Vulnerability Analysis And Resilience Assessment Of The Air Traffic Control Sector Network Under Special Events

With the rapidly growing demand in domestic air transportation volume,the shortage of airspace resources,the serious congestion of flow control,and the increase of flight delay rate have become a major issue restricting the mushroom growth of civil aviation.Sectors,which are the elementary entity of an air traffic control(ATC)system,have a vital role in guaranteeing the daily safety and well-ordered operations of flights.Constructing an ATC sector network model of mainland China from the aspect of ATC sectors,providing a comprehensive empirical analysis on the ATC sector network from a complex system perspective using network science tools,and analyzing the vulnerability and resilience of the ATC sector network under the disturbance of special events,which are greatly meaningful for reducing flight delays and improving the safety and efficiency of airspace operation.ATC sector network modeling and characteristic analysis.Using the complex network theory and taking the area control sector in mainland China as an example,the undirected ATC sector network model of mainland China is constructed by taking sectors as nodes and linking edges between adjacent sectors according to air routes,and the empirical research and correlation analysis on structural attributes of sector networks are analyzed.The results show that the ATC sector network has a small clustering coefficient,a small network density,and a lengthy average shortest path.The cumulative degree distribution follows a two-segmented power-law distribution in the double logarithm coordinates,and the cumulative distribution of the betweenness and strength shows an exponential distribution.The ATC sector network has assortative structure characteristics as a whole.Vulnerability analysis of ATC sector network.Combining with the network efficiency and the maximum connected subgraph relative value,the performance loss of the sector network under the disturbance of special events is explored by using two strategies of random and deliberate disturbance,and the vulnerability of the sector network is examined.The results indicate that the sector network has strong robustness and small performance loss under random disturbance,while the performance drops quickly under deliberate disturbance,which is easy to trigger the vulnerability of the network.The degree has the greatest impact on the vulnerability of the ATC sector network,and the sectors with a high degree value should be protected first.Resilience assessment of ATC sector network.The resilience of the ATC sector network is proposed and a quantitative evaluation method is used to measure it.By comparing and analyzing the resilience indexes under different recovery strategies,the optimal recovery strategy of sector network under external interference is identified,so as to build higher system resilience.The assessment indicators of sector network vulnerability and resilience under special events are explored to reveal the coupling relationship between system structure and vulnerability and resilience.The results demonstrate that the ATC sector network has a negative correlation between vulnerability and resilience.In the disruptive phase,the sector network exhibits better resilience under random disturbance,while the resilience of the network under degree disturbance is poor.In the recovery phase,the network based on random recovery strategy has the least resilience,while the network resilience is maximized under the degree recovery strategy.The resilience of the ATC sector network under external interference can be significantly improved by adopting the degree recovery strategy.