December 19, 2011–It’s no mystery that the airport is one of the most data-rich locations on the planet. And it’s tough to drive fifty miles without finding a landing strip just about anywhere in the world. And without much shock, we’ve discovered a lot of big thinkers in big data are focusing their attention toward the skies and more importantly those places where they take off. We got a push in this direction after discovering a fascinating Air Traffic Management article, “Airservices Moves to Enterprise Data Warehouse Solution.”
According to the story: “Australian air navigation service provider Airservices Australia has introduced a single data warehousing solution to bring together a vast range of aviation-related information and improve data capture, reporting and analysis…The ANSP has been working with IBM to install its Infosphere software and build an executive dashboard in the first release of Airservices Enterprise Data Warehouse.”
Surprisingly, it’s not just analytics organizations jumping into the fray. Appliance kingpin General Electric also looks to be getting involved with big data for airports. A recent Wall Street Journal story declared: “The company is also developing software to be used in managing air-traffic control.”
Some smart analytics users are even helping consumers before they reach the airport. Sites like Anna Aero utilize big data tools to help predict fares for flyers. A venerable one-stop-shop for travelers, it boasts: “Besides genuine number-crunching analysis we also pride ourselves on a sleek news-gathering operation.”
In addition, government agencies, like the RITA are utilizing analytics and travel. Small companies that focus wholly or partially on travel analytics also appear to be springing up, like Kale Consultants. While the sheer number of analytic work being done in and around flight is overwhelming, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Almost every step from ticket purchasing, to flying, to landing is recording data and it’s a rich pool of possibility, waiting to be fully explored. We think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Patrick Roland
Image Courtesy of Morguefile.com: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/107379
[...] our story “Airports and Analytics Grow Closer Together” showed how the complex world of airports are getting less cumbersome by sorting their [...]