Visually Analyzing the Impacts of Essential Air Service Funding Decisions

Essential Air Service (EAS) is a U.S. government subsidy program which ensures maintenance of commercial airline services in small deregulated communities. The program’s budget currently is around $250 million annually, which is used as subsidy for airlines to maintain a minimal level of scheduled air service in relatively smaller airports. It is evident that 2% of the FAA budget is being spent to maintain air service in smaller communities, but there is not enough evidence to prove that all the current decisions made by Congress about EAS are advantageous. To understand these decisions, 15 years of data produced by the US Department of Transportation and Bureau of Transportation Statistics needs to be analyzed using an exploratory approach. The goal of our paper is to collect the EAS subsidy data produced by the US Department of Transportation and Bureau of Transportation Statistics and develop a multi-year and multi-location visual analytics tool which uses graphs and user-interaction to make it easier for decision makers to understand and analyze the data. We want to use this visual analytics tool to analyze the EAS funding decisions and determine its impact upon the funded airports, based on changes in factors like per passenger subsidy trends, total number of arriving and departing flights and total amount of freight being transported

Cross-referencing social media and public surveillance camera data for disaster response

Physical media (like surveillance cameras) and social media (like Instagram and Twitter) may both be useful in attaining on-the-ground information during an emergency or disaster situation. However, the intersection and reliability of both surveillance cameras and social media during a natural disaster are not fully understood. To address this gap, we tested whether social media is of utility when physical surveillance cameras went off-line during Hurricane Irma in 2017. Specifically, we collected and compared geo-tagged Instagram and Twitter posts in the state of Florida during times and in areas where public surveillance cameras went off-line. We report social media content and frequency and content to determine the utility for emergency managers or first responders during a natural disaster

A methodology to engineer government incentive design for subsidized air transportation

This work attempts to quantify the benefits and guide future policy decisions for subsidized air transportation programs. This is accomplished through applying new analytical methodologies to the Essential Air Service (EAS) subsidy in the United States. This work begins by enumerating the benefits of EAS stated in previous research and government publications. Transportation data from the FAA and US DOT, as well as economic data from the US Census is then collected for a selection of the benefits. First, geospatial analysis techniques are applied to select and compare counties with and without EAS service to determine if differences in benefits can be found in the data. Economic factors (per capita income) as well as social factors (racial diversity and crime rate) are compared between the communities with and without EAS. It is found that the proposed methodology does not provide supporting evidence that counties with EAS have a measurable benefit for the tested factors than counties without EAS. Second, a multi-criteria decision model is developed to first gauge an airport’s reliance on EAS and then make system-wide decisions on which airports to continue funding if the program is faced with budgetary cutbacks. This multi-criteria decision model is tested against a single criterion decision model from previous research using a cost-benefit analysis to quantify the effects of a 20% reduction in EAS budget. It is found that the use of the multi-criteria decision model can result in continued service to an additional 47,000 current EAS passengers while spending $2.5 million less than the previously introduced decision model. Third, an electronic questionnaire was sent out to EAS airport managers and directors in an attempt to validate the decision criteria in the multi-criteria decision model as well as gauge if any metrics for economic and social benefits of EAS currently exist. It is found that the decision criteria cannot be easily validated through stakeholder feedback due to discrepancies between the collected data and stakeholder accounting. Additionally, no system-wide metrics exists for economic and social benefits

Workload evaluation of sectorized air traffic control and stream management

Stream management is a novel air traffic control operational concept in which controllers control streams of aircraft that are functionally equivalent, rather than being responsible for “aircraft in airspace.” One of the potential benefits of stream management is workload reduction for the same amount of aircraft handled. An adaptation of the dynamic density workload measure was used to evaluate stream management operations against current sector based control. This evaluation is completed using FACET software and ASDI data. Stream visualizations and data analysis demonstrate the advantages of stream operations

SuccessVis - Visualizing Academic Impact

SuccessVis is a flexible web-based visual analytics system for presenting and evaluating academic impact. The system is developed for stakeholders who have little training in visualization techniques and have invested in academic programs, specifically in the VACCINE (Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments) Center, to understand the impact of the center and, thus, better evaluate their future investments in academic research centers. The system is capable of displaying metrics indicating the total impact of the academic research center and allows comparisons between the impact of individual projects, and the dynamics and evolvement of the impact. In this paper, we present the design process of the system, the final product displaying the impact of the VACCINE Center over the past eight years, and discuss the challenges in visualizing academic impact