A model, a heuristic and a decision support system to solve the earth observing satellites fleet scheduling problem

Creating an observation schedule is an important part of the earth observing satellites fleet management process. Even for a short term schedule already dozens of earth observing requests requiring several satellites have to be scheduled respecting complex constraints involving multidimensional resource capacities as well as request preferences. This paper first presented the earth observing satellites fleet scheduling problem, then formulated a conceptual model and provided a heuristic approach for generating efficient schedules. This paper also outlined the modules of a decision support system managing the disaster and environmental monitoring satellites fleet in China. The system performance shows significant improvements with respect to faster and better scheduling of heterogeneous earth observing satellites.