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From laboratory to real life: Fraport’s approach to applying artificial intelligence in airside operations and ground handling
Journal of Airport Management,
15
(3),
266-279
(2021)
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been gradually finding its way into various areas of our life in recent years including air traffic and airport management. Establishing a basic understanding of the characteristics of this specific class of algorithms and the associated conceptual differences to classic information technology (IT) solutions is increasingly proving to be a critical success factor when introducing and running AI solutions in a safety- and security-critical environment such as commercial aviation. This paper explains how Fraport has been establishing a multilevel organisational AI approach. The approach is demonstrated at the example of the project on establishing a more precise prediction of arrival times at the gate (Estimated In-Block Time [EIBT]) which was used as a catalyst in this process. Fraport’s approach stretches across the entire solution development process, from understanding the problem and determining the room for improvement in an application-oriented data lab format called the Corporate Analytics Centre (CAC), all the way to developing a full-scale IT solution for operational use in the ‘IT Factory’. The practical experience of the first project has shown that not only technical challenges have to be solved during the development and implementation of the first AI solutions but it was also clearly a matter of establishing trust in AI solutions on various hierarchical levels on the user side.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; data science; big data; Estimated In-Block Time (EIBT); Estimated Landing Time (ELDT); radar tracks
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Rolf Felkel is Senior Vice President Application Development and deputy CIO at Fraport AG. Dr Felkel is in charge of the development and maintenance of all IT applications at Frankfurt Main Airport. He represents Fraport AG on the ACI World Airport IT Standing Committee and is the Vice-Chairman of the Aviation Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS) Working Group. He joined Fraport’s ICT department in 2000 as a system planner for the Flight Information Display System at Frankfurt Airport. In the following year, Dr Felkel worked as an ICT project manager, set up a group of in-house ICT consultants and was responsible for Landside IT solutions. Before working with Fraport, Dr Felkel completed studies of mathematics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 1995. He then completed his PhD at the end of 1999. This granted him the title of Dr rer. nat. in the field of numerical non-linear optimisation.
Torben Barth is part of the analytics group at Fraport’s ICT department and has the role of a Senior Consultant and Data Scientist. Torben is responsible for the development of quantitative solutions at Frankfurt Airport. Since his start at Fraport in 2005, he is involved in the introduction of mathematical and statistical decision support solutions for operational and strategic problems. Torben obtained his PhD in Operations Research at the Management Engineering department of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in 2014. His PhD thesis dealt with the optimisation of baggage handling at airports.
Thilo Schnei belongs to Fraport’s analytics team and has the role of a Senior Consultant and Data Scientist. Thilo’s main responsibility is the ideation, development and operation of solutions using artificial intelligence for airside applications. He started his career at Fraport’s airside operations department in 2009 by introducing various methods for analysing radar position information. After six years, he moved to Fraport’s ICT department and became part of the ongoing efforts of introducing analytics and artificial intelligence to core airport processes. Thilo studied mathematics at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and successfully submitted his PhD thesis about the approximation of radar traces to the Universität Passau.
Björn D. Vieten is a member of the airside systems unit of Fraport’s ICT department and has the role of Senior Consultant, Project Manager and Requirements Engineer; Björn joined Fraport in 2002 and has since worked on various concepts for tower, airside and cockpit covering the full range from initial idea to regulated solution. After seven years in the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management programme (SESAR), Björn became the project manager of an R&D project co-funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) solutions based on earth’s magnetic field sensor data and of the AI project improving the Estimated In- Block Time (EIBT) at Frankfurt Airport. Björn worked in international consultancy and operational readiness and airport transfer projects and on European standardisation processes. He holds a master’s degree from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. His studies focused on economic and cultural aspects of commercial aviation.
