The basis for the design methodology of future air traffic systems presented in this paper is making uncertainty management the primary and top-level design principle. Entropy measures the dispersion of probability distributions, and plays a central role in analysis of dynamic physical systems (e.g., thermodynamics) and information architectures (i.e., through information theory). Air traffic systems combine physical systems and information architectures to ensure safety while maximizing capacity. Physical systems, including air traffic flow and weather, generate positive entropy flows while information flows (e.g., command and control) are modeled as negative entropy flows. The principles for designing future ATM is developed based on entropy calculations. A quasi-conservation law is presented based on entropy flows for ensuring that the physical air traffic flow operates in regions of the dynamic state space that has very low probabilities of collision or flight through adverse weather while maintaining high capacity. The goal of these principles is to simplify the design of ATM architectures that are robust to exogenous events, and enable a top-down design methodology.
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