ARO: Geographic Information Systems-Based System for Optimizing Airport Runway Orientation

Determination of a runway orientation is a critical task in the planning and design of an airport. The direction of the runway controls the layout of the other airport facilities, such as passenger terminals, taxiways/apron configurations, circulation roads, and parking facilities. This paper presents a geographic information systems (GIS)-based system called airport runway optimization (ARO) that determines the best runway orientation for the effective layout of airport facilities. The paper first provides an overview of the previous research efforts with regards to runway orientation and investigates Federal Aviation Administration standards, wind conditions, airspace obstructions, topographic settings, and other factors that apply to runway design. It then addresses a GIS-based wind rose method that automates the determination of runway placement. The ARO system uses the GIS-based wind rose method and customized GIS functions and database management tools to successfully solve the “partial coverage” problem. The ARO system significantly improves the current efforts of using “trial and error” and computation-intensive methods to determine runway alignment.