Contact Us

Airport Cooperative Research Program
500 Fifth Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20001

Phone: 202-334-2000

Close
Periodic Publication on Transformative Technologies at Airports
Menu

Aviation Data Sharing Now Possible: The Semantic Model Spotlight

ACRP Periodic Report on Transformative Technologies at Airports
- September 7, 2022

Summary

Airport operators have had a growing need for a means to obtain and share data in a common and standardized way with their many industry stakeholders for a variety of reasons, from providing a seamless customer experience to improving operational performance. Further, digital transformation has driven the importance of this need and secured its place at the forefront of industry priorities.

The Aviation Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS) Working Group is helping to address this issue with its Semantic Model. An airport operator that implements this model can experience the following benefits:

  • ACRIS projects introduce a standard data model and standard interfaces to the airport.
  • The Semantic Model establishes a common terminology.
  • Airports do not have to spend time recreating a data model standard that is not industry compliant.
  • Standardization facilitates faster and more cost-effective implementations.

Airport operators could explore the offerings of the ACRIS Working Group to take advantage of the work done in data modeling and data sharing, which is compatible with the efforts of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to do the same. With the help of ACRIS programs and recommendations, airports, airlines, and stakeholders of all kinds can realize and leverage the capabilities made possible through a digitally connected aviation industry.

Background

The aviation industry has long been envisioning a new age in commercial aviation and passenger journey experience—an age in which, as Ron Hiscox of Airport Process Design puts it, “the passenger no longer has to be the integrator of their own journey.” Their information should simply be passed between the different providers of their journey (airport, airline, jurisdictional agencies, etc.) to enable a “seamless” experience. The primary industry-wide barrier to this has not been that the data do not exist; the problem is that each organization has access to only a small portion of data, and the different data types that each organization needs to pull together are spread across many organizations and organizational types. Further, each organization has different types of systems and databases of varying ages and versions, and each has unique database standards for organizing and categorizing the data elements. For example, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) uses the ACRIS Airport Geospatial Information Model (AGIM). The AGIM standard was built using the ACRIS Semantic Model to define a standard model for storing geospatial information about airports. SFO uses this model to share real-time, geospatial information for wayfinding inside the airport and terminal buildings with passengers and other stakeholders.[1]

One way the airport could apply this data-sharing effort to improve the passenger experience is, for example, by helping passengers identify when to leave for the airport, based on their departure time and expected parking availability, check-in/bag drop lines, and security wait times. Then, upon arrival at the airport, passengers could be directed to a parking lot and space that is closest to the check-in hall and security checkpoint they need. If the specific security checkpoint is closed or experiencing an irregular wait time, passengers could be presented with any options available to shorten their walk and wait time. And if passengers are late, the airline needs to decide whether to leave without them; however, if they knew that passengers had parked their car or had cleared the security checkpoint, the airline could make a more informed decision. All of these options improve passenger experience by automating their decision points, which is made possible by enhanced data sharing.

ACI World’s ACRIS Working Group

Given the previously stated benefits and application example, ACI World formed the ACRIS Working Group to help bring standardization to IT systems information and data sharing in the aviation community. The group consists of representatives from airports, airlines, governments, and other aviation stakeholders working to fix issues regarding the ability of computer systems to exchange and make use of information (i.e., interoperability) in the aviation industry. In the larger concept of a seamless, digital, end-to-end passenger journey, ACRIS projects facilitate airport-to-airport interoperability. This allows the sharing of agreed-upon passenger data, flight data, and other data types behind the scenes, without passenger intervention.

The ACI World website[2] includes this description of how the ACRIS Working Group can benefit airport operations:

  • Improve economic and environmental sustainability by increasing the cost-effectiveness of resources and reducing energy consumption, carbon footprint, and wastage.
  • Improve situational awareness with easy access to timely, relevant, and reliable information.
  • Improve operational performance, such as aircraft turnaround times, by sharing timely, consistent, and reliable information with all parties involved.
  • Improve the planning process by sharing consistent information on demand, resource capabilities, and constraints.
  • Reduce cost and time involved in developing applications and systems by, for example, using standards to reduce the complexity of information interfaces.
  • Provide support for initiatives such as touchless facilities, application programming interfaces (APIs), digital twins, building information systems, condition-based monitoring, digital services, location services, and many more for the benefit of passengers and other stakeholders.

ACRIS’s two primary offerings for facilitating interoperability are the ACRIS Semantic Model and open APIs, and they are both available to use for free.

ACRIS Semantic Model

The ACRIS Semantic Model standardizes the structure, terms, and translations of the many different computer systems and databases to enable effective data sharing among aviation stakeholders. IATA, which specifically represents airlines, developed a similar model called the Airline Industry Data Model. The two models are fully aligned where they have common terms.

Application Programming Interfaces

While the ACRIS Semantic Model creates the standard for interoperability between systems, APIs serve as a key component in executing the actual data-sharing process. ACRIS provides open (i.e., non-proprietary) APIs to the aviation industry to give the industry greater interoperability as data and information are shared. For example, ACRIS currently uses its API platform to help passengers and other stakeholders learn about the restrictions and policies that participant airports enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These APIs can be used in a range of applications.

ACI World lists the following uses and abilities regarding their API tools:

  • Provide access to ACRIS APIs and relevant documentation (including the Airport Health Measures Data Model, which recently noted the participation of 325 airports).[3]
  • Learn more about the ACRIS standard and related projects.
  • Give access to the ACRIS Semantic Model.
  • Allow users to test APIs in a virtual sandbox.
  • Enable users to give feedback or initiate change requests on a specific API.

ACRIS Community

While the ACRIS Working Group focuses on specific projects, the overall ACRIS community has the following three roles: identify valuable information services, develop ACRIS Semantic Model information exchange standards, and deliver new tools and practices to support the ACRIS community.

The following are some examples of such ACRIS tools and practices:

  • ACI Airport Health Measures Portal—standard for sharing airport safety measures
  • Airport Geospatial Information Model—a standard model for storing geospatial information
  • Baggage XML—common XML standard to support baggage message management
  • Security Wait Times—common standard to support wait times

References

[1] ACI World ACRIS Case Studies: Airport Maps, ACI World, Accessed April 15, 2021, https://acris.aero/case-studies/.

[2] ACI World ACRIS Portal, ACI World, Accessed April 15, 2021, https://acris.aero/.

[3] ACRIS Semantic Model Update Presentation, ACI World, ACRIS Working Group, May 2021.

This series of articles highlights the innovation approaches taken by various airports across the United States. These articles are based on interviews with innovation leaders at each airport.