Description: Concept SEVEN (System Enhancement for Versatile Electronic Negotiation) is a new type of Traffic Management Initiative (TMI) that has been in research and development within the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) program for years. It allows for the electronic negotiation of routes based on user-submitted preferences when capacity is restricted in an area of the airspace. The first phase of SEVEN, now called the Collaborative Trajectory Options Program (CTOP), will be deployed operationally on November 2011. In this project, Mosaic ATM proposes to develop a decision support tool for NAS users that will allow them to automatically generate the optimal route options and their relative costs during CTOP events. This will allow users to take full advantage of the new capabilities and the opportunities for reducing ground delays and/or fuel burn. Additionally, this capability will be available for integration into NAS simulation tools such as ACES and FACET, to allow NASA to model high-fidelity, realistic user trajectory preferences generally and in response to CTOP TMIs in particular. In Phase 3, Mosaic ATM will additionally provide libraries containing the key algorithms for incorporation into existing flight planning systems.

Benefits: TOS generation is a key part of a user's participation in CTOP. While it is possible to use existing tools to generate TOSs, it will be far more cost effective for a user to rely on purpose-built TOS generation tools designed to take into account the users' objectives and constraints. Mosaic ATM anticipates offering TOS generation products based on the algorithm developed under this SBIR project. Additionally, the results of this SBIR project could form the basis for a new capability either provided by the FAA, through third party flight handling / flight planning providers, or organizations such as AOPA and NBAA to generate TOSs on behalf of users who have not yet developed the capability to generate TOSs themselves. Such an arrangement would provide the user with a large part of the benefit of CTOP without the need to integrate TOS generation into their internal processes. Rather, the user would supply a few parameters to the FAA or third party so that they could generate TOSs on behalf of the user. Such an approach would require the third party or FAA to have aircraft performance models and weather information, but use of such information for flight planning is currently widespread among a vibrant flight planning community, all of which could become users of the CTOP generation algorithm.

The development of a TOS Generation Tool benefits not just the NAS users, but NASA researchers also. The underlying route generation and priority algorithm within the TOS Generation Tool can be delivered as a separate code module for integration with NASA simulation environments, FACET and/or ACES. For example, FACET currently has the capability to model various TFM TMIs. The addition of a TOS generation algorithm will allow researchers to model the user response to CTOP events, in the context a NAS-wide simulation that could include GDPs and other TMIs.