Volpe Technical Experts
Rick Oiesen,
Mr. Oiesen joined the Volpe Center in 1995 and has worked on aviation traffic flow management ever since. Traffic flow management deals with congestion problems both at airports and also in en route airspace. Much of his work has been conducted under the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) program, which brings together the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with airlines and other users of the national airspace. This work has focused on the goals of enabling the various organizations to exchange data, giving all operational personnel common situation awareness, distributing decision making responsibility among the various players, and providing incentive for all to act in the best interest of the system.
In pursuing these goals, Rick and his team have deployed a number of operational tools, first in the Enhanced Traffic Management System and later in the Traffic Flow Management System. These tools include real-time data exchange between the FAA and airlines and other airspace users, a reworking of the way that airport ground delay programs are determined, simplified substitutions, slot credit substitutions, adaptive compression, a tool for defining and distributing reroutes, airspace flow programs, and others.
Rick and his team have twice been recognized by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences as finalists in the Franz Edelman competition. Both awards were for improving efficiency-in 2000 for improving operations at congested airports and in 2008 for improving usage of congested airspace. In 2002 Rick received the Al Gore "Hammer" Award, which was awarded by the Vice-President's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. In 2000 he received the Bronze Medal from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Rick was educated at the University of Texas at Austin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
