Forecasting number of passengers
More than 45 million people fly to and from Schiphol Airport every year. This number is expected to increase in the coming years. It is important that all these people go through customs and security checks without too much delays. It is also necessary to minimize the staff levels required for these checks, because otherwise costs would get too high.
Approach
Therefore reliable estimates of the number of passengers that arrive at Schiphol are needed, as well as estimates of the number of people arriving at checks. It is impossible to make a perfect forecast in advance, but with the right information (such as flight schedule information) it is possible to generate a reliable and also useful forecast.
Expected results
In this research project, passenger flows will be modeled, in order to get a reliable forecast of the number of people. Also upper and lower bounds of these numbers will be calculated. Markov chains and queuing theory will be used as well as software to produce a model of the passenger flows. The goal is to minimize the queues of passengers and to determine the most efficient staff levels.
