Topological data analysis in air traffic management: The shape of big flight data sets

Analyzing flight trajectory data sets poses challenges due to the intricate interconnections among various factors and the high dimensionality of the data. Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a way of analyzing big data sets focusing on the topological features this datasets have as point clouds in s...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cuerno, Manuel, Guijarro Santamaría, Luis, Arnaldo Valdés, Rosa María, Gómez Comendador, Fernando
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2025
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/741920
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10486/741920
https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0318108
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Algebraic topology
Matemáticas
Descripción
Sumario:Analyzing flight trajectory data sets poses challenges due to the intricate interconnections among various factors and the high dimensionality of the data. Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a way of analyzing big data sets focusing on the topological features this datasets have as point clouds in some metric space. Techniques as the ones that TDA pro-vides are suitable for dealing with high dimensionality and intricate interconnections. This paper introduces TDA and its tools and methods as a way to derive meaningful insights from ATM data. Our focus is on employing TDA to extract valuable information related to airports. Specifically, by utilizing persistence landscapes (a potent TDA tool) we generate footprints for each airport. These footprints, obtained by averaging over a specific time period, are based on the deviation of trajectories and delays. We apply this method to the set of Spanish’ airports in the Summer Season of 2018. Remarkably, our results align with the established Spanish airport classification and raise intriguing questions for further exploration. This analysis serves as a proof of concept, showcasing the potential application of TDA in the ATM field. While previous works have outlined the general applicability of TDA in aviation, this paper marks the first comprehensive application of TDA to a substantial volume of ATM data. Finally, we present conclusions and guidelines to address future challenges in the ATM domain