Bangalore Airport to Build Advanced Data Analytics Platform, CoE for Improved Passenger Experience

Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), which operates Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport has entered into an agreement with American global IT firm, Unisys Corporation, to develop an Analytics Center of Excellence (CoE).

The Analytics CoE will support a business intelligence and advanced data analytics platform for BIAL to consolidate and rationalize the Airport’s strategic, tactical and operational reporting. According to a statement by the airport this will enable Airport staff to make faster and better-informed business decisions, process air travelers more quickly and enhance the airport experience for the customer.

As part of the new data-driven airport framework, the Unisys-developed platform will allow BIAL to generate more than 150 insightful, interactive business intelligence reports, utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to forecast future travel patterns and traveler trends. This will enable the airport to shift its strategy from hindsight to foresight, predictive to prescriptive and improve future decision-making processes. Hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, the solution employs Azure capabilities such as Azure HDInsight, SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Machine Learning and Azure Advanced Data Analytics services.

“BIAL is committed to being a data-driven organization that will create a smart, futuristic and intuitive airport journey for passengers. Unisys brings a strong combination of in-depth understanding of the aviation industry and proven experience in delivering digital transformation for organizations of all sizes. Unisys’ solution will provide us with intelligent and intuitive data and analytics that will support the enhancement of the customer experience we provide,” said Satyaki Raghunath, Chief Strategy and Development Officer, BIAL.

[caption id="attachment_126359" align="aligncenter" width="700"] L-R: Javed Malik, Chief Operating Officer, BIAL, Raja Ponnuru, Financial Controller, Unisys India, Ramachandran CK, AGM – Business Intelligence, Satyaki Raghunath, Chief Strategy & Development Officer, (back) Subhash Choudhary, Sales Director, Unisys India[/caption]

The platform will allow the Airport to provide real-time content information pertaining to Airport services and flight information. The services will also provide travelers access to improved airport navigation, communication of airport services and proactive and personalized retail offerings based on passenger preferences and past spending history. This offers passengers greater visibility into airport amenities and services, in addition to establishing an avenue for BIAL to generate non-aeronautical revenues.

“BIAL is a perfect partner, committed to meeting the growing needs of today’s connected traveler,” said Tony Windever, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Unisys. “This strategic collaboration leverages Unisys’ deep domain expertise and digital transformation capabilities, like the Analytics Center of Excellence, to create a more agile, predictive business model for travel and transportation customers. Supporting BIAL’s innovative vision, this has the potential to become one of the most advanced deployments of data and analytics for any airport in India, and potentially in the world.”

BIAL is a public-private consortium that owns and operates Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru, the third busiest airport in India by passenger traffic. According to BIAL, the annual passenger traffic through the Airport is expected to grow from 26.91 million passengers in FY2018 to over 65 million passengers in the next decade. To meet growing passenger demand the airport will introduce a second runway by 2019 and open a second terminal by 2021.

“This strategic collaboration leverages Unisys’ deep domain expertise and digital transformation capabilities, like the Analytics Center of Excellence, to create a more agile, predictive business model for travel and transportation customers,” said Tony Windever, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Unisys.

In 2016, BIAL had launched the BLR Airport app, as part of its digital platform offering. Through the app, BIAL revolutionized the travel experience at the Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru (KIAB) through a combination of digital technologies that include the Internet of Things, people, services and data.

Source - Unisys

[Top Image - TheIndianExpress.com]

Hewlett Packard , PwC To Jointly Create Smart City Center In Kolkata, India

It's time we made our cities ready for the future. While we have made our daily lives technologically equipped, with a tech or an app ready to make our lives easier and more smoother, but in the process we have largely looked over the places that we stay in, our cities. Seeing the potential that smart city technologies holds in India, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and PwC have decided to join their hands on a new project that will work towards creating a center of excellence (CoE) in the city of Kolkata.

The CoE will work towards using the vast possibilities that Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has to offer and optimise things for the city administrators so that they can offer their best services to the citizens of their cities.

“The burgeoning impact of IoT is going beyond the enterprise and now has large societal implications. Bringing together our industry consulting and technology teams with HPE, we are working on solutions which will bring significant productivity gains to the organizations and societies at large,” said Raman Kalra, partner at PwC India in a statement.

The new project will see UK headquartered professional services network, PwC leveraging American multinational enterprise information technology company, HPE's famous Universal IoT (UIoT) platform in the CoE for various purposes like supporting development, testing and managing initiatives centred around future cities.

As per the agreement, the CoE at Kolkata will be making use of UIoT platform's features such as increased LoRa support, lightweight machine to machine (M2M) support and expanded device management. Together, the two global giants will work towards enabling IoT applications that can provide advanced analytics and machine learning innovations.

The project will also see PwC’s applications and dashboard being integrated with HPE's UIoT platform so as to drive speed, security and scale for the new CoE at works in Kolkata. The centre will initially be working on a number of use cases including some of the most important ones that affect cities like waste management, environment and transportation systems. Eventually, the use cases will be expanded to to other industry verticals including infrastructure and manufacturing.

Commenting on his firm's association with PwC on the project, Nigel Upton, general manager, Universal IoT platform at HPE said, “By combining HPE technology solutions and services with PwC business strategy, process, people and change capabilities, we are able to help organizations accelerate business and societal transformations, and derive greater value faster fromtheir IoT initiatives and the center of excellence in Kolkata is a testament of our joint efforts."

According to HPE and PwC, smart poles will be deployed throughout the city so as to serve as efficient aggregation points for cameras, sensors and digital display boards collecting environmental data. The data collected by the aforementioned devices will then be put to use for identifying areas that have to face heavy pollution on a daily basis.

In addition to this, IoT devices will also be used to collect traffic data and model traffic condition so that the authorities can modify the timing cycle of traffic signals accordingly for a smoother flow of vehicles. The traffic data can also be integrated with GPS data from the transit management system to provide accurate estimated times of arrival for public buses, which will not only save time of the people but also result in less traffic on roads. The plans also include placing sensors in parking lots so as to enable citizens with real-time tracking of available parking spots.

This development was first reported in Communications Today.