SIEMENS

A small blue suitcase stands unattended near a window in Terminal 2. Did someone forget it, or is it a bomb? Whatever it is, it’s taken seriously. Security officials evacuate the area and close off nearby gates. The operations manager, whose eight-square-meter monitor provides an overview of the entire airport, oversees a coordinated response. Unfortunately, it is still far from the norm to have such a complete overview of all critical information in a system that is accessible to all authorized airport service providers. Instead, the typical situation is that a range of disparate systems need to be coordinated, including security, infrastructure supervision, ground vehicle operations, passenger processing, luggage handling, and cargo – all of which routinely impact one another. In short, what’s needed is a system that allows all core service providers to work collaboratively. And things aren’t getting easier. An OECD study known as Transport Outlook 2012 reports that worldwide passenger kilometers rose by about 4.8 percent between 1999 and 2008, and are certain to continue at more or less the same rate for decades.

A recently-concluded software research and development project commissioned by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), known as Total Airport Management Suite TAMS), examined ways to improve performance using existing airport infrastructures and resources. As project manager for the program, Siemens worked with the DLR center, Stuttgart Airport, and other industrial partners on the project. The project’s vision: to assemble all of an airport’s relevant stakeholders in the same control center.

The TAMS software system contains all relevant information pertaining to activities on the ground as well as in the air, and uses this data to generate automatic forecasts and suggestions for process optimization. This supports operations managers in rapidly addressing and resolving issues of common interest. TAMS enables airports that are already working at near full capacity to manage up to ten percent more flight movements per hour, while reducing delays and fuel use.

Siemens implemented TAMS as the foundation for the development of its SIAMOS product line, which has been in operation at Münster-Osnabrück Airport in Germany since April 2012. SIAMOS supports business processes ranging from seasonal pre-planning to airline invoicing systems at a facility. SIAMOS modules have been directly responsible for significant improvements to overall operational efficiency.

Growing Pressure. Siemens is now integrating technical and safety-relevant functions with TAM’s focus on operational considerations. The idea is that it would be advantageous for airport operators to directly optimize the impact of airport operations in relation to environmental concerns including, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and noise pollution, all of which can be evaluated directly at the control center platform.

Many control center officials are also interested in facilitating the management of all the complex information that is available at an airport. The reason for this is clear: Airports are under pressure to optimize and reduce the time required for passenger embarkation and disembarkation, loading and unloading of baggage, refueling, aircraft inspections, and even crew changes. In view of this, there is urgent need for a management platform designed to make processes increasingly efficient, less expensive, and more environmentally friendly.

What might tomorrow’s airport control platforms look like? Siemens presented its vision of an Airport Operations Control Center (APOC) at the 2012 Airport IT&T Conference, held last October at the Munich airport conference center. The APOC control platform combines multiple data types, including weather conditions, departure and landing times, and disruptions to airport operations. But how much information should be presented? “There are limits to our ability to absorb information,” says Dr. Christoph Meier, Head of Aviation IT at Siemens Infrastructure and Cities. “That’s why the control platform should display information that provides an overview of the overall situation.”

“Any disruptions must be immediately recognizable,” adds Meier’s colleague Dr. Dietmar Böhme, Principal Expert for Airport Management Systems at Siemens’ Mobility and Logistics Division. “Major delays in departures cause passengers to gather at specific locations in a terminal, which can in itself pose a security risk requiring additional personnel in that location. The potential risk has to be identified and evaluated quickly, which is more critical to operational staff than knowing which flight has been delayed.”

The biggest advantage of having a central control platform is that it gives everyone the same awareness of a given situation. “Almost every large airport has experienced a situation in which an unforeseen event caused a problem to escalate unnecessarily because various departments assessed it differently,” Meier explains. If such a problem occurs, airport officials need to examine it in detail, even if they’re on the move. For example, similar to the captain of a ship, the Duty Officer responsible for overall airport operations must be accessible at all times. He or she must be able to make decisions even if not in the control center – through the use of a tablet PC, for example.

Klaus Hermes, a specialist in User Interface Design at Siemens Corporate Technology (CT), has been giving this idea a great deal of thought as well. Hermes believes the solution lies in a permanently accessible data cloud. “Important information would always be available via the cloud. This would mean that key people would not be required to permanently be in the control center,” he say.

Predictive Support. Tomorrow’s control center personnel will have another key advantage: they will not have to rely solely on their own experience when assessing a situation, because a system that contains data about all airport processes will support the decision-making process. Such a system will answer questions such as: Who needs to talk with whom? And, When must the decision-making process be interrupted because the requirements have not been fulfilled?

Such a system would also support a comprehensive analysis of the decision-making process after completion. As a result, the system would improve not only its own performance but also that of core decision-making personnel, by ensuring that all are better informed at all times and that additional resources are deployed and used as effectively as possible.

This type of learning-based system will also be able to make proposals if, for example, it recognizes that something similar has occurred in the past. “That would be a huge benefit, especially if the similar incident had taken place several years ago,” says Meier. The system would also forecast the effects of a decision on a situation. It would do so by means of calculations based on knowledge of interconnected resources. In other words, it will make predictions based on previous experience. The idea is to be able to make airport operation forecasts for a period of up to six hours into the future. Typical situations, such as unattended baggage, will be registered as security-critical events, and this will enable the required action to be initiated automatically.

And there’s more, as Meier explains: “The operations management team at large airports often doesn’t know which employee is dealing with a specific incident. With our system, this will become a concern of the past as it uses IP address identification to automatically identify those individuals involved with the incident, while at all times being able to remain in contact with them and assist in the better coordination of a successful resolution to an incident.”

All of these features are in fact, theoretically possible today, as the technology required already exists. “We don’t need any additional technology or data at airports; we simply have to utilize the existing infrastructure more intelligently,” says Steve Batt, Market Manager for Airports at Siemens Building Technologies. “The result of this is that rather than having control center personnel not be focused on perhaps mission critical services by monitoring a particular IT system, the overall airport management platform should itself automatically call in the correct support teams to deal with the particular incident.” For example, when the system identifies a blue suitcase left unattended in Terminal 2.