Simulating the impacts of airport closures on airline route networks

Air transport represents the fastest way of moving people and goods. For this reason, it is critical to the global economy and the welfare of society. The resilience of air traffic networks is, therefore, of great importance. In the past two decades, various events have shown that air transport is vulnerable to disruptive events, such as extreme weather, terrorist attacks, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and pandemic influenza. The severity of the impacts on passengers and economic activities, and overall losses to stakeholders and for society in general, would highly depend on the vulnerability and resilience of these networks. The current research seeks to develop an agent-based model to simulate and analyze the vulnerability and resilience of airline routes to airport disruptions.