Overcoming Airport Challenges with Advanced Connectivity
For many years, one of the most significant challenges faced by airports has been accessing reliable, real-time data to support critical operational decision-making. Despite advancements, data silos still exist, and inconsistencies across different sources hinder efficient airport operations. Today, there is a vast amount of untapped data within airports—ranging from the status and performance of essential infrastructure to environmental conditions and energy consumption. This data, part of the broader Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), holds immense potential for optimizing airport operations.
However, unlocking this potential requires seamless integration between Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT), a challenge that many airports struggle to overcome. Enter SMARTUNIFIER, a cutting-edge connectivity platform designed to bridge this gap and revolutionize how airports manage and utilize their data.
SMARTUNIFIER comes from the harsh industrial manufacturing environment where the device and equipment architecture even in green field approaches is strongly heterogeneous comprised out of different industrial protocols, data governance, and business applications. This environment dictates low cost, high availability and reliability, plannable and scalable from the budget side and from the first to the last device.
SMARTUNIFIER: The Ultimate Connectivity Solution for Airports
SMARTUNIFIER stands out as the ideal solution for connecting disparate systems and converting multiple protocols. This powerful platform enables rapid development of structured and reusable airport operations interfaces, allowing airports to receive real-time data from key sources and optimize their operations with unprecedented efficiency.
This data, even if it is of high volume and high frequency additionally can be contextualized in real-time (right when the data is being acquired) to add business information and thus value e.g. out of an AODB or other controlling and execution applications or databases. This data contextualization ensures early data quality and saves time and cost when latter analyses need to be performed.
Key features of SMARTUNIFIER include:
- Flexible Deployment: Whether on-premises, on-edge devices, or managed from cloud services, SMARTUNIFIER can be deployed wherever connectivity is needed, ensuring continuous, reliable data flow. This enables you to use existing infrastructure even if is not of the latest and highest performance and provides the flexibility to support your decided architecture.
- Unified Information Model: SMARTUNIFIER abstracts low-level data into a unified information model, enabling different upper-level systems to access data according to pre-defined models using multiple parallel communication channels. This ensures that airports have tailored views for:
- Equipment Status Monitoring and Control
- Infrastructure Condition Monitoring
- Asset Management
- Process & Performance Monitoring
- Energy Consumption Monitoring
- Data Storage and Archiving
- Custom, use case-dependent views
- Scalable Architecture: SMARTUNIFIER’s network-oriented architecture is designed for scalability, supporting small deployments capable of evolving into an Enterprise Nervous System (ENS) that supports airport-wide or multi-airport connectivity. This scalability reaches from the first to a practically unlimited number of devices and it includes the technical scalability as well as the commercial scalability.
Leading the Way in ACRIS Standards Migration
As airports strive to improve communication with airlines, partners, and suppliers, adopting ACI’s ACRIS standards for information exchange is becoming increasingly important. SMARTUNIFIER is the perfect platform to facilitate this migration. The platform’s ability to import ACRIS data models into SMARTUNIFIER Information Models, and map them to existing data models, simplifies the transition to standardized information exchange.
This capability is particularly beneficial in environments where diverse systems and legacy equipment coexist, as SMARTUNIFIER seamlessly integrates these disparate systems into a cohesive, standardized framework.
Case Study: Streamlining Baggage Data Integration
One compelling use case for SMARTUNIFIER in airports is the integration and combination of baggage data. Airports that have expanded over decades often operate different baggage management systems across terminals, limiting their ability to ensure smooth, inter-terminal connectivity. With SMARTUNIFIER, this challenge is effortlessly addressed. The platform’s ability to facilitate communication and integration across various protocols and equipment types ensures that all baggage systems can work together seamlessly, improving overall efficiency and passenger satisfaction.
SMARTUNIFIER: Transforming Airport Connectivity
SMARTUNIFIER offers airports a multitude of advantages:
- Cross-Platform Deployment: Whether on-premises, at the edge, or in the cloud, SMARTUNIFIER can be deployed in any environment, offering unmatched flexibility.
- Decentralized Scalability: Through a fully decentralized architecture, SMARTUNIFIER ensures virtually unlimited scalability, managed centrally for ease of use.
- Real-Time Protocol Conversion: With rapid, real-time protocol conversion, airports gain timely access to high-speed operational data, enhancing decision-making processes.
- Real-Time Data Contextualization: Enrich flat process data with business and context information to enable early data quality and reduce data analysis efforts.
- Reusable Interface Models: SMARTUNIFIER offers reusable and versioned interface models, reducing the need for extensive custom coding and speeding up deployment times.
- Multi-Channel Communication: Supporting virtually unlimited communication connections, protocols, and information models, SMARTUNIFIER’s multi-channel capability ensures comprehensive connectivity.
- Efficient Deployment: The platform’s configurable mapping minimizes the need for complex connectivity coding, enabling the development and deployment of connections in a fraction of the time required by traditional solutions.
SMARTUNIFIER is not just a connectivity platform; it’s a transformative tool that enables airports to fully harness the power of their data, leading to enhanced operational efficiency, improved safety, and greater passenger satisfaction.
Ready to Transform Your Airport Operations?
Visit our website to learn more about how SMARTUNIFIER can revolutionize your airport’s connectivity and data integration. Don’t wait—start your journey towards a smarter, more connected airport today.
Visit our website to learn more about SMARTUNIFIER!
