Bishal has been actively supporting us as a working student since March 2022 and then decided to also write his bachelor's thesis within the company. The choice here fell on the area of data management, in which he wrote the thesis on the topic of "Centralized digitalized geodata management at airports - challenges and opportunities". After successfully defending his bachelor's thesis, Bishal's time with us is unfortunately coming to an end, which is why he reviews it for us below.
We say "Thank you very much for your work done and all the best dear Bishal!".
"As part of my bachelor's degree in "Aviation Engineering/Aviation Management" at the Wildau University of Applied Sciences, I had a 3-month compulsory internship scheduled, which gave me the chance to gain practical experience. At AviaCert GmbH, I now had the opportunity to expand my knowledge of the operational processes of an airport in the aviation and non-aviation sector.
After intensive training, I was quickly able to develop my own solution approaches and thus directly support ongoing projects. During my first project, I created a process overview in the context of Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Management in accordance with the EASA regulations as part of the development of a database-based specialist application. Through this project, I was able to deal intensively with the topic of geodata management at airports and also significantly expand my knowledge in this area as a working student. I also dealt with this topic as part of my final thesis.
The complex infrastructure of an airport, which includes numerous buildings, technical facilities, flight operations equipment and safety-relevant systems, is to be used efficiently and is subject to continuous change. Digitization, which is also advancing in this area, requires the management of a huge amount of data. Position-related data, i.e. geodata, represent a significant part of this data volume. In addition, there are numerous documents and inventory data that are required at the airport to prove compliance with legal requirements. These data and documents are used to make better management decisions and develop more efficient processes, especially with regard to the safe and optimized operation of airports.
As part of my thesis, I therefore investigated the opportunities and challenges of establishing centralized and fully digitalized geodata management at airports. Geodata management refers to all processes necessary to establish an efficient operation of a geodata infrastructure. Within the scope of geodata management at airports, all geodata, inventory data and other information and documents are stored and administered centrally and digitally. The geodata infrastructure represents the totality of geodata, metadata and geoservices (geodata services), network services and technologies, as well as regulations and standards with the core task of providing the data.
Decentrally stored data and duplicates were initially identified as a possible challenge in establishing centralized and digitized geodata management at airports. For example, existing data records from different departments must be imported into the geodatabase. This data must be redundancy-free, error-free and complete. Another challenge is the creation of effective and efficient cooperation between all parties involved. All departments and relevant persons must be involved and act cooperatively to create a central database. In this context, continuous and timely maintenance of the data by all parties involved is essential. An external user commissioned by the airport (e.g. a surveyor) must also be able to access the central database. In this context, it must be ensured that they only have the necessary rights (e.g. read and/or write rights).
However, geodata management not only brings challenges, but also diverse opportunities. Compliance monitoring at airports, data collection in accordance with the aeronautical data catalog, and the provision of aeronautical data to the German Air Traffic Control (DFS) are significantly facilitated by the introduction of digital and central geodata management. In addition, necessary data required in the creation and continuous maintenance of the aerodrome manual can be supplied by the central geodata management.
ZDM also allows the creation of a wide variety of plans, such as as-built, execution or detail plans. Individual specialized applications such as FOD management, tree cadastre, aeronautical data quality or damage recording, which enable a safe and economically efficient operational process, can be developed on the basis of a central and up-to-date database according to requirements.
Overall, the potential uses of centralized and digitized geodata management are extremely diverse, especially at airports. In addition to redefining and updating workflows against the backdrop of advancing digitization, another important task for the airport of the future is to avoid conventional manual and decentralized data management and to establish structured centralized and fully digitized inventory data management."