Aviation Industry Analysis Tools
This project was an exploration into commercial aviation through the lens of data analytics and visualization. I conducted this as a side project in 2019 when I was first learning to code and about data science and visualization. At the time, I was working in the aviation sector as an architectural designer at a project office at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). My daily exposure the back of house airport operations sparked a deep interest in the complexities of the commercial aviation industry, which I decided to investigate with this project. The core objectives of this project were to develop data analytics and visualization tools which could be used to better understand operational behavior of airports and trends in commercial aviation in its entirety. I was interested in developing tools from the ground up, so the data analysis and visualization scripts used in this project were written from scratch with Python and Grasshopper (a visual programming interface in Rhino 3D). The tools analyzed operational metrics such as passenger flows, aircraft types, and origin/destination route combinations and visualized the results with custom visualization scripts which rendered inside Rhino.
Spatial Analysis
The interface was a primary focus of this project as I wanted to develop an interactive data exploration tool that would analyze and render data in real time. As I was fairly new to text-based programming at the time of this project, I relied heavily on developing the data visualization tools with Grasshopper (GH) & Rhino. The tools were programmed to allow the user to select airports with a filter geometry, which they could control the position and radius with sliders in GH. If an airport was inside the filter geometry, GH would index and retrieve data associated with the airports and summarize the data. The summarized data would then be visualized with bar graphs and brush-style visualizations to display route origins and passenger flow metrics aggregated by aircraft type.
Temporal Analysis
Another major component of this project was an investigation into temporal patterns of commercial aviation with a focus on the change in aircraft fleet mixes over time. I decided to focus on this topic because of its relevance to airport design, as the architecture of an airport, both with regard to terminal design and airfield design are impacted by the types of aircraft the airport services. For example, a trend towards the use of larger, wide bodied aircraft would impact taxiways, aircraft envelopes and other gate operations on the airfield and in the terminal, hold rooms, gate waiting areas and concourse design would be impacted by heavier passenger thruput per flight. Therefore, this analysis looked at the types of aircrafts used by carriers over time. A notable shift in the types of aircraft flown by major carriers occurred in the late 2000s as a response to the 2008-2009 recession. Around that time, carriers were forced to undergo major operational restructuring in order to service economic challenges. Many carriers discontinued operation of large, wide-bodied aircraft and moved towards smaller aircraft with higher, retrofitted seat capacity (more passengers in smaller planes). This shift allowed carriers to spend less on fuel and other aircraft expenses and reduce the number of empty seats per flight and less economically successful routes were discontinued.
