In Queensland, Australia, sixteen domestic and international airports are involved in a groundbreaking research project to help strike the optimum balance between the implementation of future-proof security solutions and the efficiency of the entire site. The “Airports of the Future” project spans seven interrelated disciplines: business process management; business continuity and incident response management; human systems; identity management; intelligent surveillance; airport information modeling; complex systems. By optimising the various elements of the process, particularly addressing security and its relation to the passenger experience, the aim of the project is to develop an integrated and adaptive, ‘complex systems’ approach for the design, management and operation of airports.
Winner of the Queensland Engineering Excellence Award for research and development, the project involved the building of a command and control facility in the Brisbane suburb of Banyo, in which new system-wide research solutions are being developed and tested in a live non-critical environment before being presented to the various stakeholders. The project included six universities, various government agencies, several service providers and three major airlines - Emirates, Qantas and Virgin.
