The following is an excerpt from the video-training entitled: How Electronic Commerce and Digital Management Tools make Airports More Intelligent, given by Angel Alberto Lovera Romero. This training was given at the First International E-commerce Congress Venezuela 2020.
What is a smart airport?
It is an airport that must be able to do several things, it must be able to accomplish two main things: first, it must always go in search of technological innovation and, second, it must seek sustainability; I believe that these would be the two most important elements for an airport to become intelligent.
When we talk about the technological part, it is as I said, the 5g interconnectivity and also other elements; There are mobile platforms, mobile devices, sensors, there is RFID technology for placing luggage, all these different devices which are technologies that are already in use are the first steps that airports must take to become intelligent, which later of course once the infrastructure barriers have been overcome is how we interconnect all these products, but the first step that an airport must always take is to go towards technology, to go towards innovation, not to think that the investment is too great, not to think that the “barrier” let’s say social or the “comfort barrier” in airports, as such, is difficult to overcome.
These first steps are the most important, and it is always to technological innovation that we speak of the sustainability of the world’s airports, and this is no longer just Latin America, but all airports are tending to go towards that airport that is able to provide or increase its operations while decreasing the impact on the environment. We see this a lot, for example, in the printing of boarding passes, we are now using cell phones, we are shopping inside airplanes, we are shopping in airports with our cell phones, electronic shopping, there are different delivery platforms, and today we are even talking about what I have seen in some European airports; about delivery species inside the airport so that people can receive packages without having to stop.
This leads to sustainability or a decrease in the impact on the environment and less printing of invoices, less printing of migration forms; for example, to give them a figure: In the United States a couple of years ago, and I don’t know if you remember the “I-94 form”, the simple elimination and digitalization of this process, which is now more than 8 years old, led to a saving of more than 20 million dollars a year in paper printing, not to mention that you can imagine the reduction in the impact it had on the environment.
You can watch the complete Smart Airport Training Video here (Spanish version):
What do you think about this topic? What should a smart airport be like for you?
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Image from 5477687 via Flickr under Creative Commons license.
