Passenger-centric airport management using real-time data and forecasting

Abstract

Timely information about flights is already passed to passengers nowadays. A next step towards passenger- centric services will be to use real-time information about passenger movement and kinetic behaviour in airport terminals. We developed a forecasting system processing real-time data of passenger movements in the airport terminal. Our system is able to predict the future demand at touch points. Furthermore, it can be used to generate the expected passenger distribution heat map. The system also provides a real-time graphical interface helping an airport operator to oversee the situation at one glance. The real-time data are enriched with a model for the kinetic behaviour of each passenger. We use our forecasting system to simulate the case of baggage re-claim. The underlying geometry of the re-claim area originates from a large-sized European airport. The movement data of 250 passengers within the simulation are used to apply kinetic behaviour analysis. The information provided by our forecasting system can also be exploited to build a real-time Passenger Information System.