Keflavik Airport is using a combination of sensors and Wi-Fi to monitor passengers via their mobile devices.
Iceland’s main airport is using sensors that connect wirelessly to mobile phones to track passenger movements in the airport.
The airport monitors passenger queue and dwell times within the airport, and uses the data to display waiting times to passengers and real-time data to airport resource planners.
Passengers can get an idea of how long they will have to wait at parts of the journey like security.
The data can obviously be used by the airport for commercial reasons.
Booming Airport
Keflavik more than doubled its passenger numbers between 2010 and 2015 and says it needs to better understand passenger behaviour to help it deploy resources more usefully.
To help handle the increasing passenger numbers, the airport uses BlipTrack that helps Keflavik to measure passenger movement through the terminal in real-time so they can understand and improve the operation.
The data comes from sensors that monitor passenger’s mobile devices as they move through the airport. By measuring individual travel times, from queue entrance to exit, and the number of people in line, measured and predicted wait time, for people entering the line, can be calculated and displayed.
The sensors only register each device’s unique ID and do not pick up any sensitive personal information.
Christian Bugislaus Carstens, BLIP System’s marketing manager:
“The sensors only register each device’s unique ID and does not pick up any sensitive personal information. The unique ID is also encrypted in the sensor, making it impossible to identify the mobile device afterwards.”
Guðmundur Gautason, project manager of operation research at Keflavik Airport:
“We use the data to see when levels of service are breached and to find the reasons. This has helped us identify the problems we had with our work shifts starting a bit too late.”
BlipTrack is used at 25 airports globally.
N.B. Image credit: Keflavik Airport
