Airport Operations Centers: The sky is the limit for control rooms

First, don’t confuse AOC with ATC. While ATC (Air Traffic Control) deals with aircraft movements in the sky, AOCs (Airport Operation Centers) focus on the end-to-end processes considering departing passengers and arriving passengers. All available information, ranging from transportation, car parking and luggage handling to overall security, comes together in this central intelligence hub. In this way, AOCs enable a common focus by all airport stakeholders on punctuality, process quality and continuous improvement. They also drive collaborative decision-making processes around specific issues.

A large city that never sleeps

An airport is an extraordinarily complex ecosystem. You could call it a large city: there are many operational duties to be performed (luggage handling, plane guidance, …), but also many crowd-related tasks (security, parking, shopping, …). All this, in a quite condensed area. In other words, many of the traditional control room verticals are represented in an airport. There is Security & Surveillance, Process Control, Emergency Operations, and Traffic Management.

In cases of emergencies – which could be a blizzard, a severe security breach, or simply an unexpected airport event – the AOC even becomes an emergency Command and Control Center. This single point of control coordinates all emergency handling operations. Which means that the infrastructure needed to do this in an optimal way needs to be in place. Depending on the size of the airport, this can vary from a large meeting room to a hall-sized control room.

5 key takeaways

AOCs are all unique projects, so there is no one-solution-fits-all approach. However, there are some criteria that apply to any control room in airports. Let’s write down some of these key criteria an AOC should answer to:
 

#1 Prepare for growth: Despite some current turbulence the future for airports looks bright. A particularly important aspect is to prepare for expansion. Not only in terms of room size, but also in technology. This doesn’t mean to buy a solution that is 25% above your current capacity, but rather a modular system that can be expanded by simply plugging in new equipment (like IP cameras, sensors, etc.). In this way, you are always on top of things without the need for a complete system overhaul.

#3 Separate different systems: Security at airports has become a lot tighter over the past 20 years, and it remains a major focus point – with still room for improvement. It is obvious that all necessary precautions to keep away intruders should be taken. However, this is often not enough to protect very vulnerable environments. In many cases, the different networks are physically split so that the most critical information can never be accessed by outside hackers. In many cases, however, the operators need information from multiple systems to get a complete overview. To do this, you need a system that can display all information on one workstation, without physically mixing them. A system like Barco OpSpace integrates the information from multiple domains at the presentation layer, always upholding the separation.
 

#4 Foster collaboration: There are many completely different things to monitor in an airport. Splitting these functions in different control rooms can be a clever idea. On the other hand, every decision or crisis could have consequences on the other functions. For example, security problems will have consequences for plane departure times, on luggage handling, possibly on traffic, etc. A straightforward way to communicate between different control rooms is essential. This can for example be done by sharing perspectives (joint blocks of video and/or data) between different operators using CMS.