This thesis examines the formal and programmatic expansion of one of the most efficient generic spaces, the international airport hub, by serving the specific needs of an increasingly common mobile citizen, the medical tourist. International airport hubs are comprised of a network of interlinked corridors where large transient populations are received, held and then dispersed again. The medical tourist is a product of the rapidly increasing cost and specialization associated with medical treatment procedures. Recognizing that the density of airport hubs now rivals that of contemporary city centers, this project expands the capacity of the international airport hub, thus enabling the airport to compete for citizens in a manner similar to cities. As one iteration of a potential airport expansion system that could serve multiple mobile citizen types, this project exploits the security requirements of an existing airport and an innovative program to hypothesize a new type of airport terminal.

The research described herein is composed of four major areas of practice. It examines the overall performance of runways and provides tools designed to improve current runway operations and management with particular emphasis on contaminated surfaces. Presented in this thesis is an overview of how to design airport pavements in order to achieve optimal friction by specifically focusing on material selection and construction techniques for rigid and flexible pavements. Rubber buildup and the impact rubber accumulation has on decreasing runway friction, particularly in a range of climatic conditions, is discussed. Four commonly used rubber removal techniques are presented and evaluated. Through this research, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) decision making protocol was developed for incorporation into airport pavement management systems (APMS). Runway surface condition reporting practices used at the Region of Waterloo International Airport are evaluated and recommendations for improving current practices are identified. Runway surface condition reporting can be improved by removing subjectivity, reporting conditions to pilots in real time, standardizing terminology and measurement techniques, and including runway pictures or sketches to identify contaminant locations where possible. Reports should be incorporated and stored in the APMS. Aircraft braking systems and their effects on landing distances under contaminated conditions are discussed. This thesis presents a proposed solution for monitoring and measuring contaminated runway surfaces and identifying the risks associated with aircraft landing through using the Braking Availability Tester (BAT). Also proposed in this thesis is a testing framework for validating the Braking Availability Tester. The proposed BAT measures interaction between aircraft antiskid braking systems and runway contaminants to determine landing distances more accurately. Finally, this thesis includes a discussion explaining how pavement design, contaminant removal, results from friction tests, and results from the BAT can be incorporated into airport pavement management systems. APMS data can be analyzed to economically optimize and prioritize scheduling of pavement maintenance, preservation and rehabilitation treatments to maintain a high level of service, thereby contributing to runway safety and optimization.

Abstract Because of the trend of globalization and liberalization, every enterprise has actively developed the operation model for their global expansion in order to raise their competitive advantage. In the supply chains of international enterprises, there are a lot of serious competitions which are not just between company and company, but between country and country as well. Every country in the world has legislated the special law which is to give some special areas and eliminate the obstructers which would hold back activities of multinational from internal enterprises in order to satisfy with the demands from all multinationals in the world. Currently, there are about two thousands to five thousands free trade zones or the trade zones that are similar to free trade zones in the world, and they have turned into a very important circulation core and transaction core for international trade. On July 23, 2003 Taiwan was published the operation statute and the operation order of free trade zone by our president. After that, its related accessory schemes have established continually, and amply expanded their utilities. Because of that, this situation has helped free trade zone to have successfully performed its strength and to have assisted to break the predicament of industry development. Currently, In Taiwan, although it has five free trade zones that are Kaohsiung Port, Keelung Port, Taipei Port, Taichung Port and Taoyuan Airport Cargo Terminal, are stationed by eighteen manufacturers, the result of the operation has not reached our expectation. However, this research would be focused on the manufacturers¡¦ satisfaction with the recent standard of free trade zone. The result of this research which is gotten by information collection and data analysis shows the recent statutes and regulations of free trade zone should be revised the following issues: 1. Cancel the regulation of 5% aborigine employment limitation. 2. Simplify the transiting customs formalities and autonomous management methods. 3. Abolish employment regulation of the foreign labors` salary which must to conform to the basic salary regulation. 4. Loosen restrictions on business scope in free trade zone for mainlander. However, there is a suggestion which is our government would need to revise the related statutes and the regulations as quickly as possible in order to operate free trade zone successfully! . Key words: free trade zone, Kaohsiung Port, Keelung Port, Taipei Port, Taoyuan Airport Cargo Terminal and Taichung Port

Today&rsquo / s dynamics - the globalization process, economic growth together with late-capitalism, the number of population living in cities and improvements in technology, communication and electronic media - have changed the course of air transportation. As the demand for aviation has increased, the policy of &ldquo / regional air transportation system&rdquo / has begun to be extensive through the world in order to provide an integrated and sustainable air transport system. As for Turkey, together with deregulation of air transportation system in 2003, the government has started the &ldquo / Project of Regional Air Transport&rdquo / . In this respect, some new regional airports are put on the agenda, which required contemporary norms and attributes of regional airport terminals. When regional airport terminals are examined, it is observed that they have typologies, all abstracted from their time-space frameworks. But, today&rsquo / s dynamic architecture attempts to alter this psyche of typology in order to create dynamic and indeterminate spaces in relation to instable transformations in contemporary cities. However, through the restructuring process, in relation to the city context, the static and determinate architecture of regional airport terminal can be challenged. Namely, an architectural program can be utilized as a tool for creating a dynamic architecture. In this respect, by designing a new architectural program for K&uuml / tahya-Afyonkarahisar-USak Regional Airport Terminal, which is on the agenda of the government, this study firstly, examines the norms and attributes of regional airports and secondly investigates how the architectural program of regional airport terminals should be designed according to the needs of contemporary cities in the 21st century.

Advances in hardware and pattern recognition techniques, along with the widespread utilization of remote sensing satellites, have urged the development of automatic target detection systems. Automatic detection of airports is particularly essential, due to the strategic importance of these targets. In this thesis, a detection method is proposed for airport runways, which is the most distinguishing element of an airport. This method, which operates on large optical satellite images, is composed of a segmentation process based on textural properties, and a runway shape detection stage. In the segmentation process, several local textural features are extracted including not only low level features such as mean, standard deviation of image intensity and gradient, but also Zernike Moments, Circular-Mellin Features, Haralick Features, as well as features involving Gabor Filters, Wavelets and Fourier Power Spectrum Analysis. Since the subset of the mentioned features, which have a role in the discrimination of airport runways from other structures and landforms, cannot be predicted, Adaboost learning algorithm is employed for both classification and determining the feature subset, due to its feature selector nature. By means of the features chosen in this way, a coarse representation of possible runway locations is obtained, as a result of the segmentation operation. Subsequently, the runway shape detection stage, based on a novel form of Hough Transform, is performed over the possible runway locations, in order to obtain final runway positions. The proposed algorithm is examined with experimental work using a comprehensive data set consisting of large and high resolution satellite images and successful results are achieved.

BOT model is widely used in developing countries to facilitate the construction of immediately needed infrastructure projects with both technical and financial risks being borne by the private sector. BOT model differs from traditional ones because of its financial structure and operation service that is included in the concession. The aim of this research is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for BOT projects by examining real BOT projects, mainly airport projects. In this research, a detailed literature survey has been carried out as well as in-depth interviews with experts to identify the CSFs that are categorized in 13 groups. Based on these factors, a decision support v checklist has been developed. The checklist has the &ldquo / source&rdquo / of each CSF and the &ldquo / phase&rdquo / of the project that the CSF will have an effect. Finally two BOT projects, namely Dalaman and Aktau International Airport Projects, are studied thoroughly using the developed checklist. This research gives clear description and understanding of CSFs for airport projects which was a missing part in the construction management literature together with illustrative real cases. The findings of this research may be helpful for decision makers at the initial stages of BOT projects by providing a checklist of CSFs and demonstrating their significance in each phase of a BOT project.

The megaregion spatial form has grown in prominence in recent years in planning thought, but the relationship between megaregions and the aviation sector is rather untouched in research. The purpose of this study is to examine the role airports play as transportation hubs for megaregions, and how the megaregions are connected through air traffic. Comparing the megaregions involved an empirical study using attribute data about the megaregions and the flows between them. The infrastructure in the megaregions was compared by density and type of airports, including an examination into airline hubs. The connectivity between megaregions, non-megaregion areas, and the international market was analyzed employing T-100 data, separating the analysis for the passenger and freight sectors. The top flows in the country were examined, along with the relationships each megaregion has individually, and particularly their internal flows. Megaregions are much more active in air travel than non-megaregion areas due to a larger presence of airline hubs and greater infrastructure. The international component of the passenger and freight sectors is growing the fastest in relation to megaregions, but only for the freight sector is this the largest component. The largest component of the passenger sector is the flows between megaregions. Flows within megaregions for the passenger sector are growing slowly and are declining in the freight sector, but short-haul air traffic continues to be the cause of congestion. The megaregion is a suitable level to manage infrastructure investment to better prepare the regions for the coming growth. A megaregion-level institution is best suited to managing the issues which must be faced by the numerous jurisdictions.

The increase in the types of airspace users (large aircraft, small and regional jets, very light jets, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.), as well as the very limited number of future new airport development projects are some of the factors that will characterize the next decades in air transportation. These factors, associated with a persistent growth in air traffic will worsen the current gridlock situation experienced at some major airports. As airports are becoming the major capacity bottleneck to continued growth in air traffic, it is therefore primordial to make the most efficient use of the current, and very often, underutilized airport infrastructure. This research thus proposes to address the increase in air traffic demand and resulting capacity issues by considering the implementation of operational concepts and technologies at underutilized airports. However, there are many challenges associated with sustaining the development of this type of airports. First, the need to synchronize evolving technologies with airports' needs and investment capabilities is paramount. Additionally, it was observed that the evolution of secondary airports, and their needs, is tightly linked to the environment in which they operate. In particular, sensitivity of airports to changes in the dynamics of their environment is important, therefore requiring that the factors that drive the need for capacity expansion be identified and characterized. Finally, the difficulty to evaluate risk and make financially viable decisions, particularly when investing in new technologies, cannot be ignored. This work thus focuses on the development of a methodology to address these challenges and ensure the sustainability of airport capacity-enhancement investments in a continuously changing environment. The four-step process developed in this research leverages the benefits yielded by impact assessment techniques, system dynamics modeling, and real options analysis to 1) provide the decision maker with a rigorous, structured, and traceable process for technology selection, 2) assess the combined impact of interrelated technologies, 3) support the translation of technology impact factors into airport performance indicators, and help identify the factors that drive the need for capacity expansion, and finally 4) enable the quantitative assessment of the strategic value of embedding flexibility in the formulation of technology portfolios and investment options. The proposed methodology demonstrates, through a change in demand at the airport modeled, the importance of being able to weigh both the technological and strategic performance of the technology portfolios considered. Hence, by capturing the time dimension and technology causality impacts in technology portfolio selection, this work helps identify key technologies or technology groupings, and assess their performance on airport metrics. By embedding flexibility in the formulation of investment scenarios, it provides the decision maker with a more accurate picture of the options available to him, as well as the time and sequence under which these should be exercised.

To date, environmental protection in the context of air transportation has referred solely to noise and emissions. As air traffic continues its remarkable growth over the next years, despite all increasing security and safety burdens, third-party accident risk assessment will become a further area of societal concern. This paper presents a mature risk assessment technique to determine individual and societal risk values around airports. Furthermore, it initiates discussion of the economic impacts of the public safety zones which could be considered for implementation, once target risk levels have been defined by the regulating authorities. / Bisher wurde die umweltbezogene Belastung durch Flugbetrieb in der Umgebung von Verkehrsflughäfen ausschließlich anhand gegebener Lärmund Schadstoffbelastungen bewertet. Aufgrund des weiter zunehmenden Luftverkehrs und eines gesellschaftlich deutlich gestiegenen Sicherheitsbedürfnisses stehen in Genehmigungsfragen von Flughafenausbauten nun auch die durch den Flugbetrieb induzierten Risiken für die Bevölkerung im Fokus. Vorgestellt wird ein diesem Bedürfnis Rechnung tragendes, transparentes Berechnungsverfahren für so genannte Einzelund Gruppenrisikowerte, d. h. jene örtliche Wahrscheinlichkeit, mit der ein einzelner Mensch bzw. eine Personengruppe durch einen Flugunfall zu Tode kommen kann. Weiterhin erfolgt eine Diskussion über mögliche wirtschaftliche Konsequenzen, die sich aus den resultierenden Nutzungsbeschränkungen um den jeweiligen Flughafen bei Einführung von entsprechenden Grenzwerten ergeben können.

A globally integrated economy is one of the most prominent features of globalization and how city stakeholders respond to the global economy varies from city to city. Connecting to the global economy is often portrayed to be necessary for the continued economic development of a metropolitan area. Large transportation infrastructures such as airports represent one of the most visible ways of connecting to the global economy. Decisions made by city stakeholders regarding airports in order to reposition their city in the global economy have profound consequences for its residents. This thesis aims to examine the role played by air transportation in the processes of globalization present in Tampa Bay, Florida, and focuses specifically on investigating the following research questions: 1) What vision of Tampa Bay is driving the economic development plans of stakeholders of Tampa International Airport and St. Petersburg/Clearwater International Airport? 2) What understanding of globalization do Tampa Bay economic development and air transportation stakeholders have? 3) How does air transportation fit into the economic development plans of Tampa Bay stakeholders and how will each airport play a part? To answer these questions, this thesis uses a qualitative research approach that relies on open-ended, in-depth interviews and artifact review as the methods of data collection. Interviews were conducted with representatives of transportation facilities, government economic development entities, non-profit economic development organizations, and private business interests. These interviews focused on the themes of visions of a future Tampa Bay, stakeholder understandings of globalization, stakeholder perceptions of space-time, and ultimately how air transportation assets in Tampa Bay may or may not be used in the economic development process as a response to the global economy. The results reveal that Tampa Bay stakeholders largely share in a vision of a future Tampa Bay but are not in as much agreement on how to achieve this vision, particularly regarding air transportation. Governance structure is found to be one of the greatest challenges associated with stakeholders' response to the global economy. The subject of governance structure in this case study is tied to changing perceptions of space-time, brought about by the pressures of a global economy, which in the minds of stakeholders requires one to do more with less in order to compete in the global economy. The findings provide important insights on how Tampa Bay stakeholders use air transportation in the process of economic development as a response to the global economy.