ACRP IdeaHub Research Projects

Further guidance on how to approach the design of airport infrastructure that is more resilient to climatic change is required. Efforts are underway both nationally and internationally to address identification of vulnerabilities and incorporating into planning documents; but there remains a gap in procedures to evaluate and determine design criteria for engineers and architects that may be more readily endorsed by funding... more »

Airports are increasingly interested in bringing multi-disciplines together in a common environment to improve collaborative decision making during regular and irregular operations. Guidance on how to plan and design for these centers is needed.

Bring to ready attention both some common utilized apps for typical business purposes as well as specialize apps for other functional purposes.

The USGS will be releasing the Earthquake Early Warning System for public use in 2018. All airports in the west will need to understand how this will directly impact shutdown of critical infrastructure, alerting to the public and changes in the airport safety systems.

To determine best practices for providing backup transportation within an airport for the following situations:

- Aircraft emergencies, where passengers must deplane an aircraft and be bused to a terminal

- Planned and unplanned outages of alternative intra-airport transportation systems such as trains.

Demonstrate an autonomous system that meets flight requirements for

small airports and commercial operators.

Develop airport-specific Incident Command System training courses at the ICS-100 and ICS-200 levels that meets NIMS training standards as established by the National Incident Management System Training Program.

Training and professional development of airport emergency managers is needed to orient new airport emergency managers to the special operational, regulatory, safety, administrative, and cultural aspects of functioning at an airport. This is becoming more urgent as more and more often airports are hiring emergency managers whose experience has been outside aviation.

Development of a microgrid standard framework (Technical, Financial, Regulatory, Permitting) solution which can apply to all airports across the country. Due to the complexity of the airports' operation and numbers of stakeholders and decision-makers, this comprehensive solution has not been developed.

Airport operations from the curbside to the airspace are increasingly relying on data. Airport operators and their stakeholders are procuring airport operations suites that do not necessarily talk to each other (even within the same stakeholder/entity). The purpose of the Airport Operational Databases (AODB) is to create an Airport Information Center integrating various operational data for making them available to a... more »

Proposal to create a financial, legal, and policy analysis of the opportunities and challenges to retrofitting existing airport renewable energy projects with the necessary storage, controls, and integration to provide resilient power to airports and their assets. In addition to the analysis, the partners propose to conduct a workshop at an airport with existing solar assets and create a worksheet tool to provide guidance... more »

While there is existing guidance on emergency planning and business continuity for airport operation, the recent storms to hit the gulf and eastern coasts have presented different challenges in airport operations. The project would pull lessons learned from airports effected by the damages of the storms as well as external factors that may not be under airport control. examples:
- Loss of NAVIADS
- The airport has power... more »

The objective of this research is to improve airport employee
performance under conditions of task saturation. While task saturation
is listed as a top 10 safety concern, there is little to no evidence
that there are interventions in place to mitigate its impact on human
performance. This research will produce an intervention (training, tool,
etc.) that will be made available to airports nationwide for
their use. The... more »

Airport Emergency Plan requirements do not fully recognize the impact on airport employees and business partners in times of disasters or emergency events. Lessons can be learned from aviation organizations such as Jet Blue who have models for anticipating employee and business partners family needs for emergency support. Essential employees need support for their families in order to assist the airport and community... more »

To improve the ACRP Airport Microgrid Implementation Toolkit ("the Toolkit") by updating cost and technology information with new annual data, optimizing toolkit user interface, integrating new distributed energy resource capabilities, and identifying a long-term host.