ABSTRACT
In complexity science a property or behaviour of a system is called emergent' if it is not a property or behaviour of the constituting elements of the system, but results from the interactions between them. In the socio-technical air transport system these interactions are between human operators, technical systems and procedures at airlines, airports and air traffic centres. To accommodate expected growth in commercial air traffic, significant changes to the air transport system are in development both in the US and in Europe. The challenge is how to identify and study emergent behaviour during the early design stage of future ATM. This chapter identifies several methods of analysing weak emergence in future air traffic design, including the safety risk property. It demonstrates that weak emergent behaviour of future designs can be identified and analysed by the application of agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) in combination with agent-based hazard modelling and rare-event Monte Carlo simulation.
