An Index of Dynamic Density

摘要

The risk of a collision between aircraft is rising as the density of commercial air traffic increases. This trend, together with the overwhelming need to upgrade the National Airspace System, has motivated the Federal Aviation Administration to sponsor the development of metrics to evaluate "dynamic density"-a proxy for the likelihood of collision risk. Here we propose and evaluate a mathematical index of dynamic density, D, that describes collision risk. Although our domain of investigation is aviation, the logic of D is applicable whenever objects move in limited spaces.