Optimum AIrport Terminal Layout Planning

This paper reports on the development of an heuristic algorithm for designing airport terminal layouts. Current practice of generating layouts depends heavily on past designs and intuition. No formal design method exists. This algorithm was devised to assist the designer quantitatively. The airport terminal is represented by a set of four types of components connected by a set of links. The components in turn are represented by equations of circles which are manipulated in accordance with the principles of analytic geometry. The result is a physical layout of each floor of the terminal building. Each layout is optimal in that total passenger movement is minimized.