Intelligent resource simulation for an airport check-in counter allocation system

The objective of resource allocation systems is to assign valuable corporate resources to meet business demands. However, in applications involving stochastic events, demands cannot be determined explicitly beforehand. For those applications, computer simulation is often used to predict resource demands. The paper describes research in developing a knowledge based simulation system to predict resource requirements at an international airport. Our intelligent resource simulation system (IRSS) determines how many check-in counters should be allocated to each departure flight while providing passengers with sufficient quality of service. This predicted resource requirement is then used by a constraint-based resource allocation system to allocate the actual check-in counters. Because IRSS considers many more factors than a human can, the resulting allocation schedule is more efficient. These factors include: 1) different service rates for different destinations, airlines, or handling agents; 2) different passenger arrival rates for different times of the day or days of the week; and 3) different requirements for different service levels, etc. Our experiments show that there are substantial resource savings by combining a resource allocation system with an intelligent resource simulation system