SubscribeFlight Information Display Systems (FIDS) and Airport Operational Database (AODB) Past, presence and future.
FIDS (Flight Information Display System) and AODB (Airport Operational Database) systems have undergone a large number of developments during the last years.
These developments – often the result of new technological possibilities – are an ongoing process and the end of this process is for sure not in sight. This article will focus on the developments of software for AODB and FIDS and the vision of Net Display Systems on this.
In the past the quality and functionality of FIDS systems was very limited. The monitors for displaying flight information were often still black and white, the information was line-oriented and only consisted of text.
An AODB, a central system to store, manage and distribute all airport and flight related information, was totally unknown. Most of the time data was entered manually into several systems; a costly and time-consuming activity with a great chance for mistakes and inconsistencies.
Today a FIDS and AODB form an important link within the IT activities of an airport. These systems must make sure that the processing of the passenger flows runs smoothly and that the turn-around times of the aircrafts can be minimized. In this way the FIDS and AODB systems must lead to a cost reduction for the airport.
Evolution from projects to products
It is remarkable to see that in practice by far the most FIDS and AODB solutions always have been approached as projects and that this still is the case. A lot of time and money is spent by airports in making detailed specifications, going through long tender procedures and having developed custom solutions.
Many things are re-invented, without making optimal use of the expertise that has been gathered at a large number of other airports. Finally, often not enough attention is paid to good installation procedures, documentation and training material.
An unnecessarily amount of money is lost with all this on the development of functionality that is available in almost the same way at many other airports.
In reality the basic functionality is the same for each airport and there are only a very few details in which the airports differ from each other. This makes it unnecessary to consider the entire system as a custom solution.
An airport could save a lot of time and money by making a separation between hardware and software and to choose for the software for a product approach instead of a project approach. In practice the separation between hardware and software sometimes is found back in tender procedures, but a product approach is not yet very often applied.
For the software a product approach means that the airport must do a product comparison instead of making its own specifications. On the score of the results of the product comparison one should come to a final choice of product.
By this a costly tender procedure could be omitted or could concentrate on the remaining custom solutions instead of the basic functionality. However, a requirement for this approach is that the offered products are open, so that the missing functionality can be added as an extension to the standard product.
Vision
10 years ago Net Display Systems already saw the advantages of such a product-focused approach. It was one of the very first that came with a standard FIDS product, including a standard editor to easily design screen layouts. In many systems at that time adjusting a screen layout meant 2 weeks of programming.
Today’s situation is that most of the FIDS suppliers in the meantime have a standard product or claim to have one. In practice the results of a completed project are often unjustly considered as a product. A real standard product is characterized by being directly available (for instance on a CD-ROM), including a standard installation and standard documentation.
When software adjustments are required for the ‘product’ before it can be delivered to a specific airport, there can not be spoken about a real standard product.
By far the most solutions are still very inflexible and closed. One can only buy the complete system as a whole, whereby the hardware and software are often also bundled. At the same time it is often not possible to interface with the system from external without the intervention of the supplier.
Net Display Systems however has chosen for a suite of open, industry-based products, comparable to Microsoft Office. An airport can use the various products from the suite that can perfectly link together, but also one-by-one can form a solution. For an airport that already has the disposal of a database with flight information it’s for instance enough to only buy a signage system that (without programming!) can be easily connected to the existing database.
Within the products of Net Display Systems the software is separated from the hardware. A system integrator or airport is not obliged to buy certain hardware, but can decide itself to choose the hardware, on which the software will be going to run. This reduces the dependency, lowers the risks and will lead in many situations to cost reduction.
The vision of open products is supported by Net Display Systems in several ways. For instance the FIDS solution can easily be connected to every industry-standard FIDS database and also the AODB can be based on various databases, like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. A so-called SDK (Software Development Kit) forms an essential part in the vision of NDS.
The SDK that is delivered with every product offers all functionality of the product to external software developers. This makes it possible for IT developers to completely independent develop the required custom solutions around the standard products.
Finally, all NDS products are based on industry standards, which offers great advantages. For playing videos the Microsoft Windows Media Player component is used. This means that all existing video file formats, under which streaming video, are automatically supported.
Also future video file formats are automatically supported without the need for the product to be adjusted. The displaying of web contents is based on the Microsoft Internet Explorer component in a similar way.
All this allows airports to determine their own strategy for their complete FIDS and/or AODB system, according to their budget and requirements. One buys the standard software product and independently of this determines who will do the other software development, hardware, installation and support. One can choose for the own IT department to fully control the costs, knowledge and risks or choose for a reliable system integrator.
Benefits of standard products
Beside the benefits described above, standard products have a lot of other advantages for airports. One of them is that the airport gets a lot of functionality for a relatively small amount of money. Moreover the software is more reliable because it is used at multiple airports and problems are detected and solved at an early stage.
Another advantage is that an airport can participate without any risk in the functionality that comes available in consequent releases. As a result one continually has the benefits of new technology and keeps a state-of-the-art solution for a low price.
With the FIDS product of Net Display Systems one profits for instance from the fact that the same software is also applied outside the airport industry as a public display solution. Through this functionality like the integration of advertising and multimedia presentations until and including the simultaneous displaying of TV broadcasts and flight information becomes available.
With the traditional FIDS projects after delivery mostly no additional functional development takes place, unless on explicit request of the airport and against significant costs. The practice is that such systems during the years become outdated and at the end must be replaced entirely.
Finally standard products often have the advantage of a well-tested, quick and easy installation. For instance the installation of the software of Net Display Systems can be up-and-running at a small airport within one day, while even for the largest airports an installation within 2 weeks is possible.
Of course there are a lot of other benefits that could be named, but unfortunately there is no space for this here.
Future developments
As a software company and supported by the largest private investor of the Netherlands, Net Display systems will also in the future keep focusing on the development of standard, innovative software products for the airport industry and other public display applications. The translation of new technologies in interesting, useful functionality for airports plays a crucial role in this.
As a result of this Net Display Systems has just released the newest version of its FIDS product. This software is entirely based on the Microsoft .NET platform, a platform that runs on top of operating systems like Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003. This platform offers a large range of new possibilities and forms a solid basis for future developments.
For the AODB market we see that at this moment the evolution towards standard products has made less progress than it’s the case in the FIDS market. Today Net Display Systems is one of the very few companies with a standard solution for AODB systems. This is a low cost solution that is available for airports of any size and includes all advantages described above.
It turns out that the chosen strategy of Net Display Systems is a success. At this time more than 40 airports and many hundreds of other sites worldwide use our products. For the airports this includes small regional airports like in Sweden as well as large airports like Toronto Lester B. Pierson, Changi and recently the new Terminal 2 of Munich airport.
