Design of an Expert System for Airport Rubber Removal

The most important parameter for airport operator is safety. Minimizing any possible risks for passengers, crew, and equipment is the main objective of applying safety management systems at airports. The rubber deposits that accumulate on the runway surface due to aircraft operations is one of the most critical factors that directly effects on the skid resistance value of the airport runway. Four common techniques are applied throughout the world for mitigating this rubber strip water blasting, chemical, shot blasting, and mechanical. Every technique has its pros and cons in terms of cost, efficiency, environmental effect, and damage to pavement surface. The current design involves developing an expert system that takes into account the parameters that may support choosing the optimal method for rubber removal in certain situations. These parameters include airport classification, cost involvement, accessibility, pavement damage concerns, environment damage or side effects, and any additional factors such as noise. The system is developed using webpage-based Expert System builder ES-Builder. Simple user interface, windows based, easy to build the decision tree are the major concerns for choosing this program to build the proposed expert system. The expert system follows a deduction process, until the expert system makes the final conclusion according to user selected answers. The proposed expert system works very well when selecting appropriate answers taking into consideration specific characteristics for each airport category. Faulty conclusions could be given if the user does not use the appropriate parameters related to the airport category. There is no optimum solution, every airport situation is different, and the solution or the recommended method varies from one airport to another.