Vancouver Airport is looking at ways to leverage its assets differently while much of its operations remains on hold because of the pandemic.
Lynette DuJohn, vice president of innovation and chief information officer, Vancouver Airport Authority, says the airport thought it had a “pretty diverse revenue platform” but soon realized everything depended on passengers.
Speaking during a session at the World Aviation Festival virtual event this week, she adds that Canada is still 90% down in terms of passenger numbers and expects that to continue.
DuJohn goes on to describe airports as “small cities” and says Vancouver is trying to become an innovation hub.
“Every type of technology probably could be tested at an airport.”
Internet of Things initiatives fall within the remit of the desired hub and the airport recently partnered with a community college in the city which has just started an IoT program, according to DuJohn.
“Instead of building an IoT platform at their facilities, they are going to use the airport as their lab.”
IoT initiatives at the airport also feed into its creation of a digital twin, which the airport is developing to assess future opportunities from operations.
“There are so many opportunities when you’re talking about digital twins, that’s real time and, you need to understand how passengers are moving through the airport and you need to have sensors everywhere, understand them and be able to connect them back into the brain so IoT is bang in the middle of our strategy.”
She adds that the innovation hub is not just about ideas, which she says are a "dime a dozen" but real adoption and that the airport is looking at every element of operations from the ground to the airfield to “derive learning opportunities and develop talent.”
Funding for projects, she hopes, will be a combination of government innovation grants and private companies that undertake development at the airport.
There’s a precedent for innovation hubs within airports with Singapore’s Changi Airport announcing its Living Lab program in 2017 enabling startups and established companies to develop new technologies in a live environment.
Meanwhile, a Terminal Testlab opened at Munich Airport just over a year go to highlight digital security to passengers.
The pilot is part of the wider LabCampus initiative, a cross-industry innovation center being built at the airport.