Rome’s Airport Nervous System
Gary Vaynerchuk proclaims that it’s four billion times more important to make a fast decision than a perfect one. I might challenge the statistical veracity of his claim, but the idea is provocative. Our modern landscape is full of data, drones, and driverless vehicles. Decision-making needs to keep pace. Yet, many businesses are flying blind in real-time.
Streaming data is to fast decisions as nerve cells are to your nervous system. The engineers at Rome Airport have built a kind of Airport Nervous System.
Floriana Chiarello describes how Rome Airport streams real-time data about passenger flow, flights, and boarding events. These data streams are the nerve endings of the Airport Nervous System. It helps identify security issues, congestion, and operational problems as they happen. Then, the nervous system kicks in.
Like putting your hand on a hot stove, Rome Airport staff can react instantly. When lines get congested, they open new lines. When the wrong person opens the wrong door, security reacts. When your bag's mishandled, it's handled.
Who cares if these decisions happen tomorrow? For airport operations, fast is better than perfect.
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By some reports, only 11% of companies have access to data less than an hour old. That means too many businesses are flying blind in real-time. To learn more about real-time analytics, check out these stories:
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ENDNOTES
1. Thank you to Marc Ambasna-Jones for the inspiration from the original ComputerWeekly/Tech Target article featuring Rome Airport and Floriana Chiarello, head of demand management at Aeroporti di Roma.
2. Statistic from Jon Payne of Intersystems, reported in ComputerWeekly.
