Coming to an airport near you! How the IoT and digital twins could transform operations

June 30, 2022

Last updated: July 13, 2022

3 min read

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Gaëlle Bristiel

VP Engineering and Head of AI Delivery Hub - Amadeus

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When people think about airports they don’t necessarily think about disruptive technology. While fintech, gaming and consumer services might be stealing the headlines, a quiet technology revolution is stirring in aviation operations. One that could make air travel more efficient, better connected and ultimately more enjoyable. This blog post looks at emerging technologies that our industry is now beginning to explore.

Digital Twins

Airports are complex environments with a huge number of ‘moving parts’ all coming together to ensure a flight departs based on the effective use of air-side assets. Thanks to advances in connectivity and sensing hardware these physical assets, like tow trucks, baggage containers and the aircraft themselves can now be connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).

But establishing this connectivity on its own isn’t particularly useful, it’s what is done with the resulting flows of data that matters. One of the most exciting options is the creation of Digital Twins. A Digital Twin is a virtual model of a real-world object or place. The virtual representation is created using sensors positioned around the airport that allow a video-game style virtual representation of a location like a departure hall. If you’ve ever played a modern videogame, then you can envisage a Digital Twin. At the airport, this is essentially a digital representation of events occurring at the airport based on data collected from these connected assets, often brought to life using 3D gaming engines like Unity or Unreal.

These visual models aren’t easy to construct at the airport as we need engagement from multiple actors like the airport, the airlines, ground handlers and other service providers but the benefits could be significant. Imagine if a large aircraft is landing and the digital twin is able to alert airport management to malfunctioning passenger lifts within the terminal. How might this arriving passenger stream function without a lift? What is the impact on connecting passengers likely to be? With a shared Digital Twin the right decisions can be taken, for example, perhaps we should assign the aircraft to an alternative gate.

Another great application of digital twins could be scenario planning. How would an airport cope if 30 flights were re-directed from a nearby airport due to bad weather? Historically airports could look at such questions and estimate the expected impact. But with a digital twin they can input this scenario and observe how it is likely to unfold. This type of planning helps our industry get ahead of disruption by understanding the chokepoints in our operations so we can plan for extreme scenarios.

The IoT can make airports more sustainable

Even before we progress to widely adopted digital twins the IoT will transform how we run airport terminals. Bringing data together from connected assets as diverse as air conditioning systems, lifts and even passenger toilet facilities is helping airports to operate more smoothly and more sustainably.

Today, we are running trials with airports that help them to use connected sensors to measure air quality levels at the airport and in the surrounding area. These tiny sensors use infrared to detect fine dust particle concentration in the air so we can take more sustainable decisions.

This insight opens the door to new ways to run an airport by, for example, charging airlines based on emissions rather than typical landing slot (or volume based) metrics. Similarly, when you have this emissions data from the IoT, then the optimization algorithms used to run an airport can be rewritten to factor-in sustainability objectives, rather than simply operational efficiency goals. For example, during stand and gate allocation calculations the potential ‘taxing’ needed by aircraft can up-weighted to reduce unnecessary fuel burn.

As airlines and airports become more data-driven we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to collect data from connected aviation assets and to visualize it in new ways that make our airports smarter. At Amadeus we’re working with our customers and investing heavily to bring such capabilities to the industry.

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