Within the feasibility study the following 6 tasks were performed:
**Task 1: Market research on airports in Europe and worldwide
Main Results: As a first step within the feasibility study a market research on European and international airports took place. According to Airport Council International (Global Trade Representative Organisation of the world’s Airports), the worldwide market for AMORPH.aero is represented by about 1.800 commercial airports which are segmented into four Tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4. These Tiers are differentiated by the number of passengers per year. There are about 230 airports bigger than 5 million passengers per year in Tear 1, 2 and 3. Part of the total market, that is especially interesting for AMORPH.aero is represented by the 50 largest airports worldwide each with more than 32 million passengers per year. At the same time, these all are practically HUBs with a high percentage of transit passengers. A further main outcome of the research performed was, that currently there are worldwide only a very few providers of professional IT-solutions and products for planning and forecasting passenger flows in airports. The planning systems of these competitors do not offer the possibility to calculate and provide of operational forecasts to the users in real time. It is however to be expected that other providers are to come on the market soon.
**Task 2: Definition of a realistic business case
Main Results: Within the performed feasibility study it became evident that using modern systems for the accurate forecasting and scheduling of passenger flows as well as their impacts on airport operation will become a more and more important competitive factor for airports to decrease operational cost despite of the increasing personnel costs and growing service quality requirements. Furthermore the study showed that the main challenge for airports is to continuously improve the service level for airport customers at the same time. An important area that must be intensively covered is the use of fast and accurate forecast methods and processes for the resource scheduling and planning at process points in airports. The timeframes especially important are the current shift, the actual day as well as the next day for the planning of personnel capacities and other airport resources.
**Task 3: Creation of a product and technology roadmap
Main Results: A midterm product and technology roadmap from 2015-2017 was developed for the AMORPH.aero software. In the roadmap the results of the performed market study were considered on the one hand taking into consideration the different airport classes. On the other hand the results of various interviews with airport experts were considered. The product roadmap covers features that are required by the airports to be more competitive and more effective in planning and controlling passenger flows. These identified features were sorted according to requirements priority as well as according to development efforts (e.g. stepwise from more simple to more complex functionalities). The technology roadmap goes along with required features and stepwise e.g. improve prediction accuracy and performance, i.e. topics directly related to the efficiency of simulation and optimization methods and algorithms. Furthermore the most modern IT technologies as e.g. Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud Services will be integrated.
**Task 4: Development of a realization plan
Main Results: Piloting, demonstration as well as marketing and sales activities will be strongly intensified for AMORPH.aero after financial funding will be obtained. Amorph Systems will then strengthen the business development that is necessary. Especially winning new pilot customers (like e.g. Airport Stuttgart, Airport Munich, etc.) will be one of the most important targets to be reached within a timeframe of the next year. Being able to fund these pilot activities would significantly increase the chances in winning additional pilot customers and will bring us in the position to realize successful projects with enough highly skilled resources. For strengthening sales, an experienced sales team in airport and airport logistics field shall be employed as soon as possible. This team should have very good professional knowledge (passenger flow control in airports) as well as a broad contact network to potential customers and business partners. Furthermore, efforts shall be spend in the areas of trade shows, announcements and advertising the AMORPH.aero product to push it into the market. From organizational point of view the area of Airport Solutions as well as Technology & Product Development shall be strengthened, in order be able to focus on customer demonstrations, pilot projects and customer projects as well as on the continuous development of technologies and functionalities of AMORPH.aero. Later on a support team shall be built up for performing necessary maintenance services, namely after the implementation of the first customer systems.
**Task 5: Carrying out workshops with European airport industry participants and publication of a technical paper
Main Results: As important part of the work performed, several meetings with potential customers have been held with valuable outcome regarding an overview of the different activities and future plans within the airport industry.
Meetings took place at different locations in Europe covering big hub airports like Berlin, mid-size but rapidly growing airports like Helsinki and smaller origin and destination (O&D) traffic oriented airports like Stuttgart. As a result from these meetings Amorph Systems learned that airports are at different points of internal improvements of their own facilities and technical infrastructure. For all of them the availability of qualitative and reliable data from airlines and the airport side used databases (AODB) are relevant steps to go forward with predictive solutions like AMORPH.aero. Indeed some airports (e.g. Munich) as industry leaders are already able to go ahead as they were focusing during the last years to improve their own data availability and consistency. Those are highly interested as especially at European airports infrastructure and facilities cannot be rapidly increased determined by the environment and surroundings.
**Task 6: Assessment of other industry sectors for application of the “Operational ForeCast Technology” (OFC-Technology)
Main Results: Furthermore an assessment of other industry sectors was made. As potential target sectors we identified beside airports the following 5 other branches of industries due to their logistic requirements and the resulting needs to optimize logistic flows of people and/or material:
1. People Flows inside buildings
2. People Flows inside on public places
3. Flow of products and materials inside complex production sites
4. Flow of vehicle traffic
5. Flow of ship traffic
During the performed project, in total 8 European and international studies (e.g. economic growth studies, future requirements studies, traffic trend studies) of the chosen industry sectors were analyzed. Especially for the area vehicle traffic and ship traffic useful data according to the development in Europe could be gained. Most difficult to analyze were the areas of people flow inside buildings and on public places. As a consequence for estimating the potential within this branches we took two studies that estimated the European development within the construction business. In the production sector we selected a study for the worldwide market for Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) as base that gives a good overview of future production requirements, especially for complex production sites. Based on the analysis of the examined studies we defined 5 criterias that allow a rating of the potential for applying advanced planning and forecasting methods and algorithms. At the end it turned out that the areas of Ship Traffic Forecasting and Production Forecasting have the highest potential and should be examined further. Moderate potential we see for Vehicle Traffic Forecasting, too. Especially Railway Forecasting should be further evaluated since this promises the highest potential within this area.
