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The benefits of wireless
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| 06 April 2005 |
The benefits of wireless
By Brendan Gallagher
A number of airports will soon launch trials of new wireless-supported maintenance and security capabilities following the award of European funding for the Franco-Swedish Wireless Context Aware Services (WICAS) communications platform.
Created jointly by Neotilus of France and Sweden's Appear Networks, WICAS is designed to combine specially developed maintenance and security software applications with WiFi (wireless fidelity) and other wireless technologies to deliver specific task-related information to mobile airport workers as and when they need it. Benefits are expected to include time savings and increases in efficiency.
The overall budget is just over EUR1 million (US$1.3 million) under the European EUREKA technology commercialisation programme to trial WICAS with airports and airlines over the next 12-15 months and use the results to develop and market a definitive product.
WICAS is intended to benefit airports and airlines by improving the efficiency of certain ground workflow processes, principally in the areas of line maintenance and security. It will do this by feeding selected information - data files and documents, streaming video images, voice-over IP (VoIP) phone communications - in a timely manner to selected operatives, depending on their skills, responsibilities and location.
In a typical WICAS security scenario, a patrolling officer spotting something suspicious could use his wireless terminal, based on a commercial PDA, to send a silent alert, so avoiding alarming passers-by. His location and profile would be automatically registered by the system, which would respond by sending back video streams from nearby surveillance cameras.
Similarly, a maintenance worker in need of immediate support while operating in the field could launch a push-to-talk VoIP application on his wireless terminal. WICAS would respond by routing his call to the most appropriate colleague, depending on time, location and skill set.
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