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.

The objectives of this research project are to:
• Create an electronic resources library – preferably a website. This searchable electronic library should provide an inventory of available publications including the abstracts and index of ACRP research documents and non-ACRP research documents related to airside planning, design and operations.
• Recommend a process for keeping the website up-to-date.
• Identify which... more »

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.

The 2,455 General Aviation Airports in the U.S. provide essential services that are uniquely available through this type of airport. A Resilience Management Plan, although expensive to contract and complicated to create, may be critical to protecting the continuity of these services. This research project provides operators with the tools necessary to effectively and efficiently develop their own Resilience Management... more »

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 »

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.

Aviation facilities are vulnerable to incidents on the electricity grid that expose them to power outage. Power outages create significant operational disruptions and they can last several hours (e.g., 2017 ATL 11-hr outage, 2020 Texas outage). Are they best practices (incl. micro-grid explored in ACRP Synthesis 91) that can help increasing power supply resiliency?

Approximately 20% of public airports have adopted solar PV over the past decade. However, most of these renewable projects have not been developed to provide resilient power directly to the airport to keep critical areas and assets up and running in the event of a power disruption. This project will evaluate existing roadblocks to retrofit solar PV projects to add resilience capabilities and provide guidance to airports... more »