september2021 - 30

TECHNOLOGY
position of rapid expansion to support this,
and in many cases the resulting BHS is going
to be more sophisticated than they are used
to due to evolving technology. "
The pandemic is having less impact on
baggage handling system investment than
many expected. The idea of sanitizing bags
for COVID-19 contamination began to get
traction last summer, but Studdiford says as
the data continued to mature, the perceived
benefit began to diminish. He says he's not
aware of a single airport in the U.S. that is
investing in automated sanitization tunnels for
inbound or outbound baggage, other than the
ones integrated at the checkpoints for cleaning
of the carry-on item bins.
He suggests what airports should think
about is the process for claiming bags in the
arrivals hall and the proximity of people
standing around the claim carousel waiting
for their bags.
" I think there is an opportunity here for
expanding the level of service and improving
customer satisfaction by providing more
square feet per passenger, automated notifications
of when one's bag is arriving at the
carousel or investigating on-demand bag
retrieval, " Studdiford says. " However, these
all take terminal space, which is always at
a premium. "
A Big Move on Technology
Software providers are building new innovations
to enhance baggage handling systems
without massive construction costs.
Khaled Nabli, who heads Digital Aviation at
Siemens Logistics, says the pandemic created
volatility challenges in airports. The need to
scale up and scale down passenger volumes
and baggage handling is a major challenge as
the industry continues to recover from the
pandemic.
Airports are faced with limited investment
possibilities given the severe financial impact
of the pandemic. Demand for an elevated passenger
experience and safer facilities creates
challenges that require unique solutions.
" This means large cutbacks in infrastructure
projects, which drives our customers
to look into alternative business models or
investments and digitalization has many
promising opportunities, " he says. " Many
customers are looking at how they can
improve and build a roadmap for the future
of post-pandemic operations leveraging digitalization
and automation. "
Siemens' baggage and airport operations
software Baggage 360 supports all aspects of
baggage logistics and operations in airports.
It assists in optimizing the baggage flow by
enabling airport stakeholders to plan and allocate
their fixed, mobile and human resources
optimally. Thus, the software supports airports
to restart operations and efficiently adapt
them to the changed market conditions.
Nabli says Baggage 360 provides transparency
in the baggage handling process. It
provides technical interfaces to allow all stakeholders
in the baggage handling process to
access information between each level. It also
provides real-time operational suggestions for
the stakeholders to improve the processes.
One of the challenges airports have is
they own and operate large scale baggage
handling systems and many stakeholders,
Baggage 360 utilizes advanced AI and machine learning algorithms to detect patterns and build models to
forecast the operations up to 24 hours in advance.
30 GROUND SUPPORT WORLDWIDE SEPTEMBER 2021
Photo courtesy of Siemens Logistics

september2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of september2021