Whenever I’m waking up in the morning I take a shower and I have some nice small breakfast. Just before I head off to go to work or to the University, I check my most important carry on: my keys, phone and wallet. In 99% of the time I know where I can find them, because I remember where I put them the night before.
But imagine you work at an airport, where more than 30.000 employees are based. Can you remember where they put their keys, their airplane stairs or their luggage carts? I bet you don’t. It’s until recent that this was a major problem at the airports: not be able to locate thousands of airport related materials.
After a market research in 2014 the problem was measured, and it was even bigger than that was thought before. More than 10.000 airplane stairs, wheel chocks and luggage carts were almost untraceable. In order to get one of these items to an airplane, you had to be lucky that there was one nearby. In reality this means that an airplane engineer, whose hourly rate is quite expensive, had to wait for valuable minutes until the items arrived at their gate. You can imagine that this IoT solution safes huge maintenance costs and a lot of delays (Emerce, 2020).
But how does this work? The vital part of this solution is that there are several technologies combined. The individual airport materials contain both a tracker and a simcard, causing the items to communicate within each other. This is due to the fact that they are connected by two radio technologies: Low Power Wide Network and Bluetooth. Finally, a NarrowBand-IoT network is in place at the airport, which connects all the different airport materials together and show them on a (mobile) application.
This system was new in 2014, but is nowadays widely available on airports. Schiphol launched their own IoT network in late 2019, where their goal is to provide travellers real-time feedback on their experiences. Hereby, the airport can provide proactive information to their customers (Emerce, 2019).
References
Emerce, (2020). Startup Undagrid maakt luchthavenmaterieel op Schiphol traceerbaar. Emerce.nl. https://www.emerce.nl/wire/startup-undagrid-maakt-luchthavenmaterieel-schiphol-traceerbaar
Emerce, (2019). Schiphol rolt eigen netwerk voor Internet of Things toepassingen uit. Emerce.nl https://www.emerce.nl/nieuws/schiphol-rolt-eigen-netwerk-internet-things-toepassingen-uit
Hi Nick, airports have quite an impact on the society so I think it is important that Schiphol uses IoT to provide travelers real-time feedback. Implementing IoT can help airports to provide a more differentiated product and improve their experience. However, the possibilities with Internet Of Things go way beyond improving travelers’ experience on the airport.
Nowadays, many airports use Internet of Things to improve operational efficiency. Did you know for example that Schiphol also tried to make the collection of waste more efficient at the airport by placing smart bins? Or that some airports are installing Internet of Things sensors on various bathroom assets? With collected data they can alert facilities management on time to prevent shortages and breakdowns.
I think that in the long-term Internet of Things can be used in various other stags of a traveler’s journey and will help airports to operate more efficiently.