Analyzing Fragility of the Advanced Air Mobility System and Exploring Antifragile Networks

Future Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is a concept that envisions to transform the current air transportation system into a more agile, flexible, and accessible system. Yet, the considered transformation and integrated system is not easy to achieve since it involves providing a high level of safety as well as efficiency. For that purpose, in this paper, we explored the fragility and antifragility concepts to analyze the AAM traffic network and provide an understanding of a system where it can benefit even under adverse conditions such as contingency events. For the analysis, first, a complex AAM traffic network is built via various AAM vehicles and possible vertiport locations that are analyzed for the Northern California area. After that, the AAM network is modeled via queue theory to simulate the considered flight plans, obtain the actual departure and arrival times under different conditions, and observe the delay propagation. Then, metrics from network theory based on targeted node and edge removals are studied to analyze the fragility of the AAM network and used for antifragility analysis. The methodology is used to analyze different disruptive cases over an AAM network such that disruptions at vertiports and over origin-destination pairs. Finally, an analysis of making the considered traffic antifragile through flight cancellations and its trade-off based on flight cancellation costs is provided.