On the afternoon of August 17, at the invitation of the School of Management, Professor Andrea D'Ariano, Professor of Operations Research at Roma Tre University, Italy, delivered an academic lecture titled "Aircraft Timing, Sequencing and Routing Optimization in Terminal Control Areas during Disturbances" at the Lecture Hall 214 of the School of Management, Chang'an Campus. This lecture was the 10th session of the 2026 Overseas Lecture Series of the School of Management, hosted by Professor Zhou Chenhao, with faculty members and graduate students from relevant research areas in the school in attendance.

During the lecture, Professor D'Ariano provided a systematic introduction on aircraft scheduling and routing optimization in airport terminal control areas under complex disturbance environments. Starting from the practical background of continuous growth in air traffic and increasing scarcity of airport resources, he first introduced the fundamental problems of aircraft scheduling and trajectory optimization. Building on this, he focused on explaining the alternative-graph-based modeling approach for aircraft scheduling, as well as the collaborative decision-making for aircraft sequencing, routing selection, and trajectory optimization. He also introduced solution methods including branch-and-bound, tabu search, and variable neighborhood search. With reference to real-world cases such as Rome Fiumicino Airport and Milan Malpensa Airport, Professor D'Ariano further demonstrated the application of these optimization methods in complex air traffic management.

Addressing the dynamics and uncertainties in air traffic operations, Professor D'Ariano further introduced rolling-horizon optimization and dynamic decision support methods, which respond to various disturbances in actual operations by continuously updating aircraft operation information and periodically optimizing scheduling schemes. Finally, he outlined future research directions including aircraft scheduling and routing optimization under disturbances, rolling-horizon decision-making under real-time uncertainties, and multi-criteria air traffic flow optimization.

During the interactive Q&A session, participating faculty and students engaged in in-depth discussions on topics such as aircraft scheduling and routing optimization, real-time decision-making under complex disturbances, and the application of optimization algorithms in practical air traffic management. Drawing on his research experience and real-world cases, Professor D'Ariano provided detailed answers to the related questions. This lecture helped faculty and students of the school gain a deeper understanding of the cutting-edge research and practical applications of operations research optimization methods in the field of air traffic management, and provided new insights for conducting related research on transportation optimization, intelligent decision-making, and complex scheduling.

【Author: Zhang Xinyi Reviewers: Shao Jing, Zhang Shuang】

[About the Speaker]

Andrea D'Ariano is currently a Full Professor at Roma Tre University. His main research focuses on developing novel scheduling and routing methods for applications in public transportation and logistics. He obtained the Italian Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) for Full Professorship in the fields of Operations Research and Transportation Science in 2018 and 2022, respectively. He has served as an expert and rapporteur for the European Commission and several national research funding agencies. He was the coordinator of the "Optimization of Public Transport and Shared Mobility" session of the Italian Operations Research and Operations Research Society (AIRO). He serves as an Associate Editor for Transportation Research Part B, C, E and the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems.