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Accurate aircraft turnaround time prediction is an important way to coordinate the operation time of airport ground service and improve the efficiency of airport operation. In this paper, by analyzing the aircraft turnaround operation process, a description model based on Time Transition Petri Net is proposed. The model describes the flight turnaround operation process and the logical relationship of the operation. According to the model, a dynamic prediction method of turnaround time based on Bayesian theorem is designed. According to the actual landing time of the flight, the aircraft turnaround time is predicted. The specific method is to obtain the prior probability distribution and joint distribution law of each operation link according to the flight history data, and use Shapiro-Wilke to test the prior probability distribution of each link. Based on the analysis and comparison between the actual turnaround data of a large airport in China and the forecast data proposed in this paper, the root-mean-square error 3.75 minutes and the mean absolute error 3.40 minutes can be calculated. This paper contributes to the improvement of flight punctuality rate and airport clearance level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of the COVID-19 had profoundly affected the development of the air transportation. In order to determine the changes in air transportation volume associated with the development of the epidemic, this paper takes Southwest China as the study area. Monthly data and methods, such as the coefficient of variation, rank-size analysis and spatial matching index, were applied. The results found that: (1) during 2020–2022, there was a positive relationship between passenger volume and epidemic development, while freight volume increased for most airports in the first quarter of 2020–2022, particularly in the eastern region; (2) From the perspective of changes in air transportation volume under the development of the COVID-19, among various types of airports, the changes in transportation volume of main trunk airports were more significant than those of regional feeder airports in remote areas; (3) however, under the influence of the epidemic, main trunk airports still exhibited stronger attraction in passenger volume. That is to say, the passengers who chose to travel by air still tended to choose the main trunk airports and formed the agglomeration distribution pattern which around high-level airports in the provincial capital. Whereas the freight volume had a tendency of equalization among airports in Southwest China; (4) Over the course of time, the consistency of the spatial distribution of the number of cases and the passenger or freight volume in southwest China gradually increased. Among them, the spatial matching rate of the passenger volume and the number of COVID-19 cases was always higher than that of the cases and freight volume, which might indicate that there was a stronger correlation relationship. Therefore, it is proposed that the construction of multi-center airport system should be strengthened, the resilience of the route network for passenger transportation should be moderately enhanced, and the risk-resistant capacity of mainline airports and airports in tourist cities should be upgraded, so as to provide references for the orderly recovery of civil aviation and regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of airport runways or other infrastructures on soft soil might risk damage and create potential hazards if inappropriate foundation treatments have been conducted. Preloading on soft soil is a commonly used ground improvement method in airport runway construction, owing to the cost efficiency and simplicity of this method. However, the theoretical basis for the design parameter estimation of this method has not been fully understood, for example, preloading height calculation and preloading time determination. In this paper, calculation models of settlement characteristics for soft soil preloading treatment and influence factors of preloading for soft soil are proposed, in accordance with Terzaghi one-dimensional consolidation theory. Preloading is counted as a dynamic process in this theory, and the settlement calculation model is expressed as an integration formula. In addition, a simplified calculation model is proposed in this paper for a specific condition of preloading treatment. Reliability of the models was verified with in situ data from an airport runway construction site in China. Results from multiple analysis reveal that preloading treatment can significantly increase the total settlement and consolidation, and accelerate the settlement rate of soft soil. Sensitivity analysis of the theoretical model found that preloading height is the key parameter affecting the preloading efficiency when ignoring the material type of soft soil. Moreover, the thickness of soft soil is the critical input parameter, as analyzing the factors affects the preloading height, and preloading treatment is a continues process rather than an instantaneous process, as can be noted from analyzing the settlement characteristics of the two loading conditions. The proposed settlement characteristic model provides valuable information for the design of preloading parameters of similar projects. Preloading is a simple and widely used method for improving the strength of soft soil; the design of preloading parameters mainly relies on the construction of a trial site or engineering judgment. The theoretical basis of this method is still weak. Thus, this paper proposes a settlement characteristic model under preloading conditions, which was verified by utilizing in situ data from an airport runway construction site. In addition, the influences of design parameters on such settlement characteristics as preloading height and thickness of backfill soil were analyzed. It was found that preloading height is the key parameter affecting the settlement characteristics of preloading treatment. In addition, sensitivity analysis was conducted on the preloading height design using an analytical model, and the results show that the thickness of soft soil is the critical factor affecting the preloading height. In that case, accurate site investigation is significant for the preloading design of soft soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the pressing requirements for sustainable development in civil aviation, conducting a synergistic evolution analysis of the supply and demand aspects in the airport green development holds great significance. This analysis helps achieve sustainable airport development and facilitates the green transformation of civil aviation development. Taking a collaborative learning approach and utilizing historical data from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport spanning 2008 to 2019, the supply-demand composite system for airport green development was deconstructed into two subsystems-demand and supply-and relevant evaluation index systems were established in this paper. A screening and optimization model of supply and demand synergy indicators for airport green development was constructed, and it was solved using a simulated annealing genetic algorithm. The Haken model was constructed to analyze the synergistic evolutionary relationship of the composite system of supply and demand for green airport development in two stages. The results indicate a shift in the order parameter of the co-evolution of the supply-demand composite system at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, moving from the demand subsystem in the first stage (2008-2015) to the supply subsystem in the second stage (2016-2019). The co-evolution of the airport supply-demand composite system has entered a new stage, but has not reached a high level of synergy. The study not only contributes theoretically by explaining the interaction mechanism between supply and demand for airport green development, but also offers targeted suggestions for achieving high-quality synergistic evolution of supply and demand for airport green development., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Wan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Based on the perspective of flight technology and flight safety, the unsaturated clayey foundation soil of a high plateau airport in the mountainous area of southwest China is taken as the research object, and the calculation method of the composite modulus of CFG pile composite foundation with the soil between the piles as the unsaturated soil is established according to the relevant characteristics of unsaturated soil, and the calculation method of the composite foundation's settlement is carried out on the basis of this method. At the same time, Plaxis finite element analysis software is used to model the actual project and numerically analyze the settlement characteristics of the composite foundation. Finally, the calculation results of the two methods are compared and studied with the actual settlement monitoring values on site. The study shows that: 1) the theoretical analysis method is able to consider the effects of pile length, pile modulus, and matrix suction in unsaturated soil of rigid piles on the composite modulus, which is more in line with the reality than the conventional composite modulus method that does not consider the unsaturated nature of the soil between the piles; 2) the resultant values computed by the theoretical and numerical analysis methods recommended in this paper are both smaller than those measured at the site but the difference is within the range of 10%, so that in the actual plateau of the High Plains airports can choose the two analysis methods recommended in this paper to conduct related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's regional economic competition is intensifying; in particular, the cluster development of air transport, high-end manufacturing, and modern service industries is closely related to the construction of regional airports. Local governments have listed aviation hubs as the hardcore advantage of high-quality growth in the new era, but it may also lead to excessive convergence and preferential system competition. Based on the "GDP competition" of local governments in China, this paper uses panel data of 78 airports in mainland China from 2001 to 2018 and tries to explore the causes of airport preferential policies. The Synthetic Control Method is used to study the influence of preferential policies on airport passenger and cargo flow, and then the Spatial Durbin Model is used to verify the spatial spillover effect of aviation hubs, which may be magnified by the preferential policies. This paper finds that the impact of preferential policies on airports in central and western China is mainly reflected in the increase of cargo throughput, and there is a spatial siphon effect on cargo throughput between airports. The implementation of the preferential policy enhances this spatial siphon effect, which in turn leads to more fierce competition. The research results show that the preferential policies, issued in central and western aviation economy, have shown a trend of evolving in the direction of vicious competition. Before the airport preferential system produces more negative effects, it should be corrected in time, and each aviation economic zone in the central and western regions should be scientifically coordinated and reasonably planned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Policy & Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the acceleration of economic globalization, the development of aviation logistics plays an increasingly significant role in the logistics industry. As the foundation of aviation logistics development, airport terminals are attracting increasing attention. In this respect, the aim of this research is to analyze 65 academic papers on Chinese airport terminals from 2003 to 2020 by utilizing analytic keywords of academic papers and suggest the research trend of Chinese airport terminals. The SNA was adopted as research methodology. Airport Terminal, Boned, and Chinese Mainland were the keywords for the first period (2003-2008), while the second period (2009-2014) included the keywords such as China, DEA, Airport, and Flight Delay. For the third period (2015-2020), Airport Competitiveness and Aviation Network were also highly connected keywords. This indicates that with the growth of the economy, the research trend of China’s airport terminals has been gradually expanding from infrastructure construction to network development. The results have implications on suggesting the research trend of Chinese airport terminals, and providing insights to the policy makers, academics, and practitioners in neighboring countries including Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the cross-sectional data of 40 large-scale international airports in China in 2019, this paper introduced natural and social factors into the calculation of airport operating efficiency and constructed a BCC-SFA-BCC-Tobit 4-stage analysis framework. Combining with the connotation of the "green, smart, humane, and safe" airport high-quality development, the paper applied the Tobit model to quantitatively analyze the influencing factors of the operating efficiency of airports, and the research shows that (1) the overall operating efficiency of the study airports is 0.734; in terms of the region, the operating efficiency of airports located in southwest and northwest regions is greatly affected by natural factors, while the operating efficiency of airports located in North China is mostly affected by social factors. (2) Under the perspective of human-earth relationship, the impact of natural factors on the operating efficiency of airports is greater than that of social factors, wherein PM2.5 and relative humidity have negative impact, while the actual foreign capital utilization of the city and domestic and foreign tourists have positive impact. (3) The regression results of the Tobit model indicate that green, smart, and safe indicators can promote the high-quality development of airports, while the humane indicator restrains the high-quality development of airports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the COVID-19 pandemic fades, the aviation industry is entering a fast recovery period. To analyze airport networks' post-pandemic resilience during the recovery process, this paper proposes a Comprehensive Resilience Assessment (CRA) model approach using the airport networks of China, Europe, and the U.S.A as case studies. The impact of COVID-19 on the networks is analyzed after populating the models of these networks with real air traffic data. The results suggest that the pandemic has caused damage to all three networks, although the damages to the network structures of Europe and the U.S.A are more severe than the damage in China. The analysis suggests that China, as the airport network with less network performance change, has a more stable level of resilience. The analysis also shows that the different levels of stringency policy in prevention and control measures during the epidemic directly affected the recovery rate of the network. This paper provides new insights into the impact of the pandemic on airport network resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic flow prediction is a significant component for the new generation intelligent transportation. In the field of air transportation, accurate prediction of airport flight flow can help airlines schedule flights and provide a decision-making basis for airport resource allocation. With the help of Deep Learning technology, this paper focuses on the characteristics of flight flow easily disturbed by environmental factors, studies the spatiotemporal dependence between flight flows, and predicts the spatiotemporal distribution of flight flows from the airport network level. We proposed a deep learning architecture named ATFSTNP, which combining the residual neural network (ResNet), graph convolutional network (GCN), and long short-term memory (LSTM). Based big data analytics of air traffic management, this method takes the spatiotemporal causal relationship between weather impact and flight flow as the core, and deeply mines the complex spatiotemporal relationship of flight flow. The model's methodologies are improved from the practical application level, and extensive experiments conducted on the China's flight operation dataset. The results illustrate that the improved model has significant advantages in predicting the flight flow under weather affect. Even in the complex and variable external environment, the model can still accurately predict the spatiotemporal distribution of the airport network flight flow, with strong robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agglomeration of airports into multi-airport regions (MARs) has become one of the salient features of the worldwide air transport system in the last decades. Meanwhile, in China, the development of HSR is growing quickly, and is both competitive to and cooperative with the aviation network. To date some research has focused on the airport classification with aviation network properties within the specific MARs. However, little research comprehensively integrates complementary transport systems (such as civil aviation versus high-speed rail (HSR)) into the analytical framework for airport classification. The purpose of this paper is to identify the unique nature of component airports and their distribution in MARs in China from multiple perspectives by accounting for the influence of the HSR system. Airports are classified along multiple dimensions including competitive concentrations, the interaction between air transport and HSR, and airport community structure, among others. The results produce distinct partitions of the component airports in Chinese MARs, and provide insights into Chinese airport functionality and impacts of the HSR network on the distribution of different types of airports. The conclusions provide a more comprehensive assessment of airports' spatial arrangement in the unique Chinese MAR context. Although this paper did not derive the market share allocation and co-opetition relationship between a specific airport and HSR, it proposed a basic framework for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intelligent sensing and communication technology in the airports' grid information system provides a multidimensional big data set for analyzing flight delays. These data from air traffic control, weather, and multiple determinants will cause initial flight delays. Due to the influence of adjacent flight time correlation, the initial delay causes the delay of subsequent flights, discovered by mining information sensing data, forming the phenomenon of flight delay diffusion. Different determinants will lead to the delay diffusion form of different regions, and more seriously, it will lead to "disaster area" delay in the whole regional grid information structure. To analyze the spatial impact of each factor on flight delay and explore the regional distribution of delay determinants, this paper combined the spatial regression model and determined the key explanatory variables by statistical and processing of the aviation system data. The case study showed the spatial airport delay characteristics in terms of aircraft movements in China. After processing intelligent sensing and communication data, the results show that there is a spatial effect between airports in terms of delay and determinants. The high-delay clusters of delay constraints principally occurred in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebe and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations. Direct flights, weather, new flight routes, take-off, and landing capacity have a more critical impact on spatial airport delays. The use of Internet of Things technology to perceive, analyze, and integrate multiple information of airport delay and combine spatial analysis models can accurately mine delay characteristics and effectively achieve digital and intelligent flight delay management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the mixed traffic characteristics of vehicles and aircraft on the airport surface and solve the problem of real-time conflict detection at key intersections. According to the actual taxiing procedures and airport control rules in China, this paper focus on abstracting the mixed motion process of aircraft and vehicles in the maneuvering area, defining the convergent cross-safety operation scenario. To quantify the driver's attention to safety separation and the degree of conservatism in adjusting speed, the vehicle deceleration rate and acceleration rate are defined with α as the exponent. Under the same spacing, the vehicle deceleration rate is directly proportional to α, and α is named the vehicle safety sensitivity. At the same time, the rules of speed change of vehicles and aircraft will be designed, and a convergent operation model of aircraft and vehicles will be proposed. Based on real-time speed and separation dynamic assessment of safety and efficiency under different traffic strategies, the computer simulation results show that vehicle safety sensitivity and deceleration rules determine the sequence of vehicles and aircraft when they are passing through in the short term and can affect the proportion of mixed traffic flow in the long run. The safety probability of vehicles passing the intersection first is negatively correlated with vehicle safety sensitivity, while the safety probability of aircraft passing the intersection first is correlated positively with vehicle safety sensitivity. The efficiency of passing without conflict with mixed traffic has an inverse relationship with vehicle safety sensitivity. When the vehicle safety sensitivity takes the value in the interval [0.4, 0.6], a mixed traffic flow with higher safety and efficiency, better stability, and a balanced ratio of locomotives can be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a hybrid evaluation method to assess the prediction models for airport passenger throughput (APT). By analyzing two hundred three airports in China, five types of models are evaluated to study the applicability to different airports with various airport passenger throughput and developing conditions. The models were fitted using the historical data before 2014 and were verified by using the data from 2015–2019. The evaluating results show that the models employed for evaluating perform well in general except that there are insufficient historical data for modelling, or the APT of the airports changes abruptly owing to expansion, relocation or other kinds of external forces such as earthquakes. The more the APT of an airport is, the more suitable the models are for the airport. Particularly, there is no direct relation between the complexity and the predicting accuracy of the models. If the parameters of the models are properly set, time series models, causal models, market share methods and analogy-based methods can be utilized to predict the APT of 88% of studied airports effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The airport network is a highly dynamic and complex network connected by air routes, and it is difficult to study the impact of delays at one airport on another airport by means of human intervention. Due to the delay propagation law contained in the delay time series, some studies have used Granger causality and transfer entropy to explore whether there is a causal relationship between any two airports. However, no research has yet established a delay causal network from the perspective of the airport network as a whole. To this end, an attention mechanism is introduced into the deep convolutional network architecture, and a deep temporal convolution prediction model considering the attention mechanism is proposed, so as to establish the relationship between different airport delay time series under the same network architecture. According to the attention factor score, the delay propagation causality between airports is preliminarily screened, and the direct causality is verified based on a t-test and propagation delay analysis. Taking China's civil airport network as an example, the method proposed in this paper can not only discover the causal relationship of delays between airports but also characterize the strength of the relationship. Further analysis found that each airport is affected by an average of six airports, and airports with small delays are more likely to be affected by other airports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transactions of Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics is the property of Editorial Department of Journal of Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An airport gate is the core resource of an airport operation, which is an important place for passengers to get on and off the aircraft and for maintaining aircraft. It is the prerequisite for other related dispatch. Effective and reasonable allocation of gates can reduce airport operating costs and increase passenger satisfaction. Therefore, an airport gate assignment problem (AGAP) needs to be urgently solved in the actual operation of the airport. In this paper, considering the actual operation of the airport, we formulate an integer programming model for AGAP by considering multiple constraints. The model aims to maximize the number of passengers on flights parked at the gate. A tabu search-based algorithm is designed to solve the problem. In the process of algorithm design, an effective initial solution is obtained. A unique neighborhood structure and search strategy for tabu search are designed. The algorithm can adapt to the dynamic scheduling of airports. Finally, tests are performed using actual airport data selected from Kunming Changshui International Airport in China. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can enhance the local search ability and global search ability and get satisfactory results in a limited time. These results provide an effective support for the actual gate assignment in airport operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, China's civil aviation industry is in a period of rapid development. The passenger traffic is increasing year by year. The contradiction between the demand and supply of flight resources is becoming more and more prominent, and the competition between airports is becoming more and more fierce. Driven by local development and the country's overall planning, there are more and more multiairport areas, so how to analyze the airport market competition in multiairport areas needs to be further realized. This paper constructs a two-dimensional Hotelling model based on flight frequency and passenger travel cost to analyze the internal mechanism of market competition among multiple airports. It is assumed that, in a multiairport area, two airports are distributed at both ends of a linear straight line, and the other airport is in between, and each airport provides displacement services connecting the same destination airport. The research shows that, (1) with the increase of the flight frequency of the airports at both ends, its equilibrium profit shows a trend of decreasing first and then increasing; the difference of the flight frequencies of the airports at both ends affects the equilibrium profit of the middle airport. (2) With the gradual increase of flight frequency, the reduction of passenger travel cost will make the equilibrium market share and equilibrium profit show a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. (3) Taking the Yangtze River Delta regional airport as an example, it is found after verification that increasing flight frequency or reducing passenger travel costs can increase the balanced profit and market share of Hangzhou Xiaoshan Airport and Nanjing Lukou Airport; increasing flight frequency can improve the balanced profit and balanced market share of Sunan Shuofang Airport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mountainous area of southwest China is characterized by significant topography and complex geological conditions, which pose great challenges to the airport's site selection, construction, and safe operation. Suining Anju Airport, one of the key projects under construction in southwest China, is essential in alleviating and dredging the air passenger flow in Sichuan Province. Because the overlying quaternary strata's physical and mechanical properties, thickness, and distribution range are fairly different in the longitudinal and transverse directions, the Anju Airport's foundation in the hilly area has typical inhomogeneity. Large-scale excavation and filling pose a challenge to the ground stability of the airport. To comprehensively monitor Anju Airport's uneven ground subsidence during the construction period, this paper selected SAR image data collected by the Sentinel-1A satellite from May 2018 to June 2021 to extract time-series ground subsidence measurements based on the SBAS-InSAR method. Furthermore, based on the simulation of roadbed filling in the airport's parallel slide fill area, the dynamic evolution analysis of soil stress field and internal subsidence caused by roadbed filling activities was carried out to further reveal the occurrence mechanism of ground subsidence. The monitoring results show that the subsidence centers of Anju Airport are mainly distributed in the filling areas, and the average annual subsidence is −20~−75 mm/yr from May 2018 to June 2021. Comparative analysis with in situ data indicates that the RMSE of InSAR monitoring results was ±6.12 mm. The numerical simulation shows that the subsidence of the airport parallel slide is mainly caused by a load of subgrade filling body and the compression of its weight. The results of this study can provide reference methodology and data support for the construction and future safe operation of Suining Anju Airport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased number of severe weather events caused by global warming in recent years is a major turbulence factor for airport operation and results in more irregular flights. Quantifying the system response status towards turbulence is critical, in order for airports to deal with severe weather. For this reason, we propose a resilience framework that is in compliance with resilience theory to evaluate airport flight operations. In this framework, the departure rate (DPR), normal weather baseline (NWB), and nonnegative general resilience (NGR) were defined and used. Meanwhile, the whole process is divided into five phases before and after disturbance, and the system capacities of susceptibility, absorption, adaptation, and recovery are assessed. In order to clarify the performance of the framework towards various severe weather conditions, an analysis was conducted at Beijing Capital Airport in China based on a dataset that includes both the meteorological terminal aviation weather report (METAR) and flight operations from January to July 2021. The results show that the newly proposed resilience framework can commendably reflect airport flight operation performance. The airport flight operation resilience characteristic is different with severe weather. Compared to sandstorms and snow, airport flight operation with stronger robustness was observed during thunderstorm events. The study also confirms that, as the weather warning level increases, the disruption time increases and response time decreases accordingly. The above results could assist researchers and policy makers in clearly understanding the real-world resilience of airport flight operation, in both theory and practice, and responding to emergent disruptive events effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we can see that, even though we have faced war, terror attacks, extreme nature and weather events, economic depressions and more, none of them affected global economies, our freedom of travel, our personal and mental health as fast and as deeply as the COVID-19 pandemic. Once considered a local event to China, it rapidly spread across the globe within a few months, bringing travel between countries to a halt and interfering catastrophically with the aviation industry. Airports and airlines soon discovered that not only were they on the brink of bankruptcy, they also needed furlough their employees, shut down terminals and fleets and, in race to establish new methodologies for public health demands to try to regain some aviation and commerce activity. The airport security sector also suffered, losing manpower, struggling with infected employees, involving staff in safety related duties which were not part of their job description and seeing new stakeholders to set the 'new security' agenda for their home court. Focus was diverted from counter-terrorism. Obviously, due to the circumstances, direct operation and development budgets were frozen or re-allocated, so work plans and an array of improvements are now under consideration. The most agile airports set up innovation labs to identy updated technological solutions in supporting daily efforts, especially with the public demand for contactless travel. Soon, some regulators began to introduce regulations, and are trying to set the industry to work on gold standards and platforms, pursuing governmental official confidence that will, in time, translate into authorisation to operate safe travels (especially on international routes, as in some countries domestic traffic has a reasonable volume). This paper analyses civil aviation actors and vectors throughout the pandemic, and offers predictions for the near future trends, especially for aviation security directors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the synergetic development of express enterprises and air freight enterprises, the express enterprises in China are gradually extending their scope of business to air express. The express company does not have its own airplane, it cooperates with airlines to offer air express services. The company has established branches in China. The branch usually adopts direct transportation to complete express shipping, which means that there is no stop between the origin airport and the destination airport. As for the routes with less volume of business, they are unable to achieve economies of scale which leads to high transportation costs. Besides the huge cost problem, there are other issues such as less cooperation among branches, arbitrariness and lack of standardization in the network operation and delayed delivery. The goal of this paper is to optimize the air express backbone network formed by branches. We establish air express backbone network optimization model based on scale economics. The model takes transportation cost, time, the number of aircrafts, the interval of airplane, and transit costs between nodes into account. We also present an illustrative case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In different regions of China that can range from 5 to 100 km2, various production plants and facilities such as petrochemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, paper mills, thermal power plants, hazardous waste disposal sites makes chemical industrial parks with Chinese characteristics. At the same time, these chemical industry parks in various places are in urgent need of advanced monitoring, prewarning, and tracing technologies, in order to strengthen monitoring of atmospheric emissions in chemical industrial parks, and timely prevention of the leakage of exhaust gas and explosion accidents in the production process of these enterprises. Most of the Chinese chemical industry parks still use traditional air monitoring technologies that requires setting up passive air monitoring collection points at the boundary of enterprises and industrial parks and use the "point" sensor and pollution factors collected by air stations. However, the operation of traditional air monitoring equipment is affected by the prevailing wind conditions, thus the traditional air monitoring equipment and technology is of limited use to conduct monitoring. One of the authors of this manuscript, Weimin Zhang with Jiangsu China‐U.S. Environmental Monitoring Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as EMCUS), with 10 years of has been testing and observing air diffusion law in chemical industrial parks for 10 years and has achieved fruitful success. The best way to truly achieve tracing and prewarning about the air pollution is to conduct timely three‐dimensional dynamic collection of chemical factors and then perform qualitative and quantitative analysis. Based on this theory, EMCUS has abandoned the traditional "point" passive monitoring theories. After a comprehensive analysis and comparison of air quality monitoring technology and equipment around the world, especially several investigations of advanced Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) equipment and software in the United States, EMCUS initiated the three‐dimensional monitoring technology for exhaust gas emissions which fully combined with the current situations of chemical industry parks. During the EcoPartnership project, the stepwise vertical and radial air monitoring technology was fully promoted in Chinese chemical industry parks to generate key emission data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of HSR development on airport technical efficiency and the labor productivity at airports. Existing literature mainly focuses on the impacts of HSR on passenger traffic. In addition to passengers, HSR development may influence airports' other outputs such as cargo and flight movements together with various inputs. These inputs and outputs collectively determine airports' technical efficiency. With access to a dataset consisting of 46 Chinese airports and 16 Japanese airports from 2007 to 2015, the paper firstly adopts both the standard two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and double bootstrap methods to evaluate the impacts of HSR development on airports' technical efficiency. We then evaluate the effects of HSR on airport labor productivity which is measured by both work-load units per employee and aircraft movements per employee. Our main findings indicate that HSR development relates to a decline in airport efficiency. Airports located in cities that have better connectivity or accessibility in the HSR network suffer more efficiency loss than the others. It is also observed that the locational advantage of HSR stations relative to airports is negatively associated with airport efficiency. By contrast, good intermodal linkage between the airport and its nearest HSR station is positively correlated with airport efficiency. Furthermore, the study reports different results between China and Japan with respect to the effects of HSR on labor productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Chongqing University of Technology (Natural Science) is the property of Chongqing University of Technology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The rail transit and civil aviation are the important components of the comprehensive transportation system. The development of the air-rail combined transport is an important effective way for China to become a country with strong transportation network. The transportation intersection form of railway under-passing airport transportation hub gradually becomes popular, thus the environmental vibration due to the under-passing railway cannot be ignored. In this paper, a large-scale integrated transportation hub construction project was taken as an example to analyze the transmission rule of environmental vibration due to the high-speed railway at the speed of 350 km/h under-passing airport in terms of the time domain and frequency domain by means of the on-site in-situ wheel-drop test. The research results show that the vertical vibration response of the ground surface along the normal direction of the railway is greater than those of the other two directions within 40 m from the centerline of the track. A vibration amplification zone appears within 5-40 m. The longitudinal vibration response of the ground surface is greater than those of the other two directions within 40-70 m. The local vibration amplification zones appear within 5-20 m and 30-60 m. The lateral vibration level of the ground surface along the normal direction of the railway increase gradually, but attenuates at the distance of 40 m and 10 m with the maximum attenuation rate of 0.67. The vertical vibration level amplifies at the distance of 60 m. The longitudinal vibration level attenuates at the distance of 20 m with the maximum attenuation rate of 0.3, but amplifies at the distance of 40 m with the maximum amplification rate of 1.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New evidence is provided that airports can produce positive and significant impacts on the urban economy. • Spillover effects are much larger than the direct effects from the perspective of the airport network, which are neglected in non-spatial models. • Air passenger is the most significant key determinant in terms of facilitating urban economic development in China by contrast to the other measures of airport activities. • Other things being equal, increasing flight frequency of existing air services has a larger impact on GDP as opposed to expanding air services to new destinations. Many studies have been conducted to examine the direct effects of airports on local economic development, however, there is little solid evidence on spatial spillover effects and much less in the context of China's airport system. To fill this gap, this paper analyses the spatial spillover effects of China's main hub airports on economic development. Our results indicate that air passenger traffic, air cargo shipment, and flight frequency can induce more positive and larger spillover effects to all other neighboring cities connected through airport network contrast to the direct effects. With other things being equal, increasing flight frequency of existing air services has a greater impact on GDP compared with expanding air services to new destinations. This paper contributes to the literature by presenting new evidence on the spatial spillover effects of airports on economic development in Chinese cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airport congestion is worsening worldwide, and is one of the bottlenecks constraining the development of global air transportation. Based on a comparison of the current airport congestion models, this paper improves the diffusion approximation model for airport congestion pricing developed by Milan Janic in 2005 in the following three areas: (1) redefining the processes of the congestion queue, (2) adding the threshold of congestion queue, and (3) amending the sub-model of delay costs. This new diffusion approximation model for airport congestion pricing was applied to Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK). After calculating delay times and delay costs at this airport on 21st July, 2007, the congestion tolls for various airlines at various times were calculated. This paper provides a solution for airport congestion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The treatment of airport sewage has posed many novel challenges because of its huge impact on the surrounding environment. This paper proposes a multi-objective decision model to optimize the scale design and process selection of sewage treatment plants in airports. In this model, we consider the conflict among the process cost, environmental protection, and benefits of recycled water. In addition, the uncertainty in influent concentration and passenger throughput is also incorporated. Airport sewage treatment has its own unique features, such as the concentration of airport sewage is higher than that of ordinary urban sewage, the change in passenger throughput impacts the volume of the airport sewage treatment, and the utilization rate of the entire sewage treatment plant must be higher than or equal to 70%. Only in this case can the airport sewage treatment plant pass the acceptance test. The Tianfu International Airport, the largest civil transportation hub airport project in southwestern China, is used to prove the efficiency of the proposed model. Finally, some significant insights are suggested for the design of wastewater treatment plants in airports.

To fully understand the temperature distribution of cold regions and the variation law of temperature fields in cold-region tunnels, this paper presents a case-history study on a tunnel located on the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China. The conclusion is as follows: the temperature outside the tunnel and the ambient temperature are affected by wind speed and light. The law of the temperature field in the tunnel is greatly affected by wind speed and wind direction. According to the field test, the wind speed in the tunnel is about 2.8 m/s in winter, and the daily average temperature at the exit of the tunnel is basically lower than that at the entrance. From the central to the entrance, the temperature in the tunnel decreases by 0.11°C every 10 meters along the longitudinal direction; from the central to the exit, the temperature in the tunnel increases by 0.07°C every 10 meters. In this regard, for the problems of lining frost damage and central drainage pipe freezing, it is suggested to adopt the way of heating and drainage, but heating the freezing area outside the drainage pipe should be avoided. The test results can provide references for the design, construction, and research of the temperature field of the tunnel antifreezing system in the cold region. It is hoped that the test results can be useful in the design and construction of frost damage prevention systems and the investigation of temperature fields in cold-region tunnels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have characterized the structures of air transport network in different countries and regions using complex network metrics. These studies coincided with the trend of increasingly available large empirical flight datasets that enable researchers to investigate the dynamics of the system, such as the propagation of flight delay. However, linking network structure with network dynamics remains a challenging task. In this paper, we proposed a method to construct flight delay networks from operational data. We provided a detailed comparison of the key structural properties of the flight delay networks in the United States and China. The comparisons of betweenness centrality of delay networks and flight networks show the advantage of the proposed method. We further found that airports in similar geographical locations do exhibit similar delay patterns in both countries. To explore the underlying mechanisms, the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA) is applied to the flights' delay time series at both the airport level and network level. Singularity spectra analyses reveal the fundamental characteristics of the airport systems and air transportation system. Our findings contribute to the understanding of structure and dynamics of air transportation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the Technical Efficiencies (TEs) of a group of airports in East China by applying a threestage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. The merit of this method allows us to consider the impact of the environmental factors on measuring airport efficiencies. Three variables, i.e. per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the proportion of the tertiary industry, and the number of tourists, are used to represent the environmental factors. The results show that the environmental factors have airport-specific impacts on the value of the efficiencies. Additionally, airport TE are dominated by both Pure Technical Efficiency (PTE) and Scale Efficiency (SE). Based on empirical results, airport specific strategies can be provided to enhance airport efficiency, such as taking the effects of environmental variables and the statistical noise into consideration when analysing the airport efficiency, improving airport efficiencies according to their own conditions and improving the PTE or SE according to their categorizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainland China's involvement in African aviation is qualitatively and quantitatively different to participation by European, American and Persian Gulf countries. This paper contextualizes and outlines the Chinese emphasis on airport finance, design and construction on the continent; Chinese airline service is secondary (and Africa-dominated), and joint operational ventures are in their infancy. The prominence of one foreign country in airport provision in Africa, the recency of Chinese involvement, its pace, its price-tag, its conditionality, and minimal concurrent Chinese airline route building to and from Africa, fix the novelty and perhaps significance of Chinese involvement in African aviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the problems of high overflow rate of pipe network inspection well and low drainage efficiency, a rainwater control optimization design approach based on a self-organizing feature map neural network model (SOFM) was proposed in this paper. These problems are caused by low precision parameter design in various rainwater control measures such as the diameter of the rainwater pipe network and the green roof area ratio. This system is to be combined with the newly built rainwater pipe control optimization design project of China International Airport in Daxing District of Beijing, China. Through the optimization adjustment of the pipe network parameters such as the diameter of the rainwater pipe network, the slope of the pipeline, and the green infrastructure (GI) parameters such as the sinking green area and the green roof area, reasonable control of airport rainfall and the construction of sustainable drainage systems can be achieved. This research indicates that compared with the result of the drainage design under the initial value of the parameter, the green roof model and the conceptual model of the mesoscale sustainable drainage system, in the case of a hundred-year torrential rainstorm, the overflow rate of pipe network inspection wells has reduced by 36% to 67.5%, the efficiency of drainage has increased by 26.3% to 61.7%, which achieves the requirements for reasonable control of airport rainwater and building a sponge airport and a sustainable drainage system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States (US) has a mature airport network, while China has a rapidly developing network. Through a comparative analysis of China and the US, China can potentially learn a lot from the development of the airport network in the US. This paper analyses the respective advantages and disadvantages of the airport networks in the US and China through the use of a variety of analytical tools. From an analysis of the airport network in the US, nine suggestions were drawn for the Chinese airport network, and 23 basic strategies were identified from the analysis of the Chinese airport network itself. Ultimately, 15 strategies were identified and developed based on these findings. The adoption of these strategies would enable China to achieve the advantages of a mature airport network that is clearly visible in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The returns to scale (RTS) nature of 41 Chinese airport airsides is investigated in this paper. We introduce take-off distance available and landing distance available into RTS estimation. To deal with the existence of multiple optimal solutions when estimating RTS using the CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) RTS method in Data Envelopment Analysis, we introduce the CCR-0-objective RTS method. The empirical study shows that all those airsides with two runway operate under decreasing RTS. Those airsides with only one runway either show constant RTS or show increasing RTS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the fact that the development of Chinese aviation industry has slowed down since the world financial crisis in 2008, how to evaluate the airline profitability improvements has become a key issue. Many mathematical methods can be applied in comprehensive evaluations, but the different focal points of these methods and the choice of methods may lead to different evaluation results, even if they are based on the same data. Both the theory and methods to evaluate the profitability of the airlines need to be developed and improved. Therefore, in order to evaluate airline management and performance, this paper presents a new approach to evaluate the Chinese aviation industry and applies towards the evaluation of 12 listed airlines and airports in the Chinese Hushen stock market. This approach overcomes the one-sidedness of a single method and obtains more comprehensive, realistic and objective results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gate assignment is one of the important tasks in the airport. The goal is to appoint an appropriate gate for the arrival or departure flight and ensures the flights are on schedule. So an appropriate and efficient gate assignment model can effectively decrease the flight delays and improve operation efficiency as well as service quality since it plays a major role in increasing revenues. In this paper, the multi-commodity network flow model is analyzed. And a robust multi-objective optimization model of gate assignment based on the objective of minimizing total time for passengers and balancing idle time for each gate is proposed to improve the service level and satisfaction of passengers and utilization rate of gates. The weighting method of linear is used to translate the multi-objective optimization model into the single objective optimization model. And ILOG CPLEX optimizer is used to solve the optimization model of gate assignment in order to obtain the reasonable gate assignment result. The schedule data of 116 flights from Sheyang Taoxian International Airport of China are used to validate the effectiveness of the constructed optimization model. And the multi-objective optimization model is compared with the existing mathematical model of gate assignment. The calculation and comparison results show that the constructed optimization model can significantly improve the assignment efficiency and satisfaction, and balance the utilization rate of gates. So the constructed optimization model of gate assignment can effectively provide a valuable reference for assigning gates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fu, Q.; Wang, N.; Lin, W.-N., and Wu, N., 2018. Comparing the environmental effects of terrestrial and offshore airports: The case of Dalian City, China. In: Wang, D. and Guido-Aldana, P.A. (eds.), Select Proceedings from the 3rd International Conference on Water Resource and Environment (WRE2017). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 84, pp. 103–108. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. To increase an airport's capabilities, it is a common practice to expand the airport and add a new runway. However, this expansion occupies more land and space and produces more noise from aircraft, which can be a nuisance to surrounding residents. There are many cities facing this problem, with one being Dalian City in northern China. Unlike many inland cities, Dalian City is a peninsula city surrounded by sea on three sides with abundant marine resources, but limited land. Therefore, building a new offshore airport away from the urban core has been proposed as an effective solution to remit the contradiction of urban and environment. It is necessary to evaluate the effects of offshore airport construction on the marine ecology and terrestrial airport construction on urban lives. In this paper, from the perspective of lost value, the environmental effects of expanding the existing terrestrial airport and of building an offshore airport on the marine environment are compared by conducting many field investigations on Dian International Airport site selection. The results show that the offshore airport plan would be distant from the urban core than the terrestrial airport plan, and the effect of offshore airport plan aircraft noise on surrounding residents would be small, as would its effect on fish in surrounding areas. Therefore, compared with expanding the terrestrial airport, establishing an offshore airport could effectively improve the urban environment and decrease the adverse effects on the marine ecosystem. This result is valuable for airport site selection for Dalian City and provides guidance for airport site selection for other coastal cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a highly competitive market, service quality can be the core competitive advantage for airline’s profitability and sustained development. This paper has investigated the differences in the passengers’ expectations and perceptions of the service quality of China’s four major domestic airlines: Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Hainan Airlines in China’s domestic market. The results will assist airline management to improve service quality by reducing the difference. Surveys were conducted with domestic passengers at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and Shanghai Pudong Airport in China. The results show that there are significant differences of service quality between passengers’ expectations and perceptions among major Chinese airlines. Passengers consistently rate ‘good safety records’ as the first priority of seven SERVQUAL dimensions, but low price remains the most important factor that passengers consider when choosing a Chinese airline. The conclusions reached in this work suggest that Chinese airlines should consider improving service quality rather than providing cheaper air tickets in order to gain competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Airport hubs’ indirect connectivity is important for any aviation network. Indirect connectivity describes the capacity of airport hubs to provide indirect connections over the airline network. As the Chinese aviation industry has experienced development, this paper offers a comparative analysis of indirect connectivity for Chinese airport hubs between 2010 and 2015. We investigate wave-system structures, weighted indirect connectivity (WIC) and indirect connections of the top ten airport hubs in China. In the spatial analysis, this paper surveys the spatial patterns of indirect connections at four important airport hubs. Beijing-Capital airport has strong indirect connectivity worldwide. Pudong and Hongqiao airports worked together to maximize the spatial coverage of Shanghai. Guangzhou-Baiyun airport has sufficient indirect connections across southern China, and it intends to expand its spatial influence into northern cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focused on the relationships among 34 major airports in China, analyzing how these relationships are influenced by spatial dependence and heterogeneity. Using a spatial econometric model, it found that passenger traffic in China's airports displays a mutually driven aggregation effect. Furthermore, the study revealed that the airport relationship changes from complementarity to competition as the geographic distance between them decreases. The study also classified the main airports in China into three hierarchical levels and found significant complementarity and competition among those within the hub-and-spoke network structure. Specifically, this study identified a complementary relationship among regional trunk and local branch airports, as-well-as significant competition among hub airports. Crucially, the study suggests that the absence of a hub airport weakens the collaborative interactions between different types of airports, emphasizing the critical importance of hub airports for the connectivity and operational efficiency of China's airport network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote the application of automated vehicles in large airports, in this study, we present an integrated optimization method for scheduling Unmanned follow-me cars. The scheduling process is divided into three phases: Dispatch, Guidance, and Recycle. For the Dispatch phase, we establish a vehicle assignment model, to allocate the vehicle resource equitably. For the Guidance phase, we offer an quantitative way, to measure the spacing between Unmanned follow-me car and aircraft. To optimize the efficiency of airport operation in the three phases and ensure safety, the collaborative planning model, and the conflict prediction model are established. An improved grey wolf optimization algorithm is adopted to enhance the convergence speed and generalization performance. A case study at Ezhou Huahu Airport in China demonstrates the effectiveness of the methods. The results show that the model of collaborative planning can make the balance of path selection, Unmanned follow-me car's working time, and departure sequence. The convergence speed of the improved algorithm has been increased by 18.75%. The inequity index of vehicle assignment is only 0.015731, and the spatiotemporal distribution of conflicts is influenced by the airport's surface layout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the impact of urban vegetation on air quality and the microclimate has attracted increasing attention, there have been few studies quantitatively assessing this impact in North China, where air pollution is severe. In this study, we investigated the impact of urban forests and urban parks on air quality and the microclimate in Jinan, northern China. Six sites were chosen to represent urban forest, urban park, and downtown areas, respectively. The results indicate that urban forest can effectively reduce PM2.5 and ozone (O3) concentrations in the warm season, when temperatures are higher and plants are lush. The PM2.5 and O3 concentrations in the urban forest areas were 6.3–6.5 μg m−3 and 21–23 μg m−3 lower than those in downtown areas during the period of 10:00–15:00. In contrast, urban park areas can reduce PM2.5 concentrations but have little impact on gaseous pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and O3. Furthermore, both urban forest and urban park areas reduced temperatures, by approximately 4.1–6.8 °C and 1.36 °C, respectively, and increased relative humidity, by about 13.4–12.9% and 0.9%, promoting a more comfortable thermal environment for residents. Therefore, this study highlights the crucial role of urban vegetation in improving air quality and creating a comfortable environment for residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient aircraft turnaround operations at airports are vital to ensure overall air traffic network performance. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the traditional aircraft ground handling process has changed significantly due to new requirements put forward by the pandemic prevention and control policy. To better understand how COVID-19 has affected ground handling operations, a discrete-event simulation model of turnaround is established to analyze the change in the whole turnaround process before and after the pandemic. The critical path of turnaround operations was used to identify the significantly affected subprocesses to which airports should pay attention. For a case study on the two busiest airports in China, the aircraft turnaround time increased by about 18% after COVID-19. Cabin cleaning, catering, and passenger embarking were the main processes in causing this increase. By evaluating the impact mechanism of COVID-19 on turnaround operations, the study sheds light on strategic, tactical, and operational approaches for relevant authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of airport construction on regional economic disparities in China using the difference-in-differences method with a long-term dataset at the city level from 1994 to 2018. We found that airport construction is associated with regional economic disparities. The mechanism operates through the enhancement of investment by airport construction, which improves local capital stock and fixed asset investment, while the channel of human capital inflow and TFP does not work. The temporal heterogeneity test proved that the effect worked only after the territorial reform of airports in 2002. The spatial heterogeneity test showed that airport construction in eastern, central, and northern cities reduced disparities in nearby cities compared to the national average, while airport construction in western cities only reduced disparities within the region. Type heterogeneity revealed that branch-line airports reduced the regional gap, while hub airports and trunk airports did not. This paper provides theoretical and practical guidance for exploring the function of airports in China's regional integration. • This paper examines the impact of airport construction on regional economic disparity in China. • We find that the airport construction narrates regional economic disparity significantly. • This paper provides a theoretical basis and practical guidance for exploring causes of regional convergence in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese economic miracle has been fuelled in large part by a flood of foreign investment. For a variety of reasons, airport infrastructure construction has yet to experience the kinds of foreign investment supplied to China's manufacturing sectors. For this, and other reasons, China's airport sector faces urgent and massive investment needs to ensure that under-investment in aviation infrastructure does not cause a bottleneck stifling continued GDP growth. This paper discusses the core economic and demographic fundamentals of the Chinese aviation infrastructure, which shows high levels of unmet demand and profound shortages of infrastructure to meet that demand, all of which strongly suggest that aviation infrastructure presents attractive investment opportunities, and will continue to do so for many years to come. The paper also documents a variety of legal, administrative and political challenges that must be addressed for investors to realise the full potential that investing in this developing sector presents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The travel service industry is a fast-growing part of the Chinese economy. With the recent announcement of Beijing as the host city for the 2008 Olympics, this trend is poised to continue. The quality of a travel service company's 'TSC) reputation generates revenue from repeat and referral business and is critical to the ongoing success ode firms in this industry. A key factor in maintaining reputation is the level of quality services provided by tour guides employed by these firms. Using an agency theory framework, this paper suggests that the optimal compensation contract of tour guides is mixture of outcome-based and behaviour-based contracts. The authors propose specific contract components that balance TSC revenue requirements and their need to maintain a strong reputation while providing incentives for tour guides to act in the best interest of the company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]