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Aviation policy information resources based on observatory networks

Exploitable results

The report describes the development of the Prototype System in accordance with the main aim of WP7: the provision, customisation and operation of a web-based information system platform as a basis for the establishment of the APRON Airport Observatory Network. Fraunhofer IITB as responsible partner for the development of the Technical Framework provided its Content Management System WebGenesis as base for the APRON specific IT tasks to be carried out. WebGenesis is a database-supported and fully web-based information system framework. Adaptations and developments were performed to build the APRON prototype according to the results achieved in the work packages dealing with organisational and specification aspects. The work done is reflected on the list of six main tasks mentioned in the Technical Annex for WP7 (Chapters 2.1 to 2.6): - Installation and customisation of the platform - Extension and provision of the database - Development and provision of information import interfaces - Development and provision of interfaces for human interaction - Prototype for information processing and direct decision support - Provision and operation of the prototype information system.
An integrated methodological framework was developed and applied for both the laboratory testing and demonstration phases of the APRON observatory. The objective of the laboratory testing was to make sure that the system before its release to the final users fulfils the user requirements and expectations in term of its technical performance and user acceptance. The laboratory testing provides the system developer with the opportunity to enhance the system performance before its field deployment. The objective of the demonstration phase was to test the technical performance and user acceptance under real life conditions by its final users and to assess the cost–effectiveness of the system. Demonstration testing results provide useful information for promoting the system use and acceptance. The proposed methodological framework was made operational through the development of data collection templates and questionnaires which were used for the collection of the relevant data for performing: i) technical performance, ii) user acceptance and iii) cost-effectiveness assessment. The technical performance of the APRON system was based on a number of quantitatively measured indicators and statistical tests were performed in order to establish the acceptance of the system performance. The user acceptance was based on relevant questionnaires and the measurement of the indicators was based on a five-point scale. Descriptive statistics expressing the values of the user acceptance indicators were calculated. Finally, using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique performed the cost-effective analysis.
A systematic and integrated methodological approach was developed in order to identify and validate the information requirements for the development of the airport observatory network. The proposed framework consists of five major methodological steps. The first step involves the identification of the airport observatory strategic objectives. Based on these objectives, a data collection and analysis methodology (second step) for the elicitation of the information requirements from the different stake holding groups has been developed. The major outcome of this analysis was a generic survey instrument that served the purposes of collecting horizontally (i.e., all applicable geographical areas / countries) the various information requirements by the various airport stakeholders. The third step practically involves two intermediate phases: a) the identification of the decision making processes related to airport development and operation, and b) the identification of the stake holding groups involved in and affected by the airport decision making process. The fourth step addresses the core of the data collection phase through the operation of the generic survey instrument and the implementation of an extensive survey by means of various data collection techniques. Within the framework of the next step (fifth step), the collected data were assessed and analysed on the basis of the specified analysis methodology and in particular qualitative techniques / instruments (e.g., Quality Function Deployment - QFD, Goal Functioning Method - GFM) in order to elicit the information requirements per type of actor / stakeholder. The major and ultimate objective of this step was the development of a tentative indicator list that incorporates the information requirements (in the form of specific data / indicators) stated by the superset of stakeholders surveyed in all geographical areas / countries covered by WP2 participants. This indicator list reflects the result of the interview / survey process by including also information on the data characterisation, importance / priority, data owner / source, units of measurement, format, data granularity, harmonised indicator definitions etc. According to the analysis methodology, the collected data were further analysed and synthesized at the next methodological step (sixth step). The objective of this step was to formalise and prioritise the information requirements and services elicited per stake holding group with the purpose of formalising and developing a final indicator list by assigning priorities for inclusion (based on their stated importance) in the airport observatory.
This document has been produced within the framework of WP2 ("Information Requirements Analysis") of the "Aviation Policy information Resources based on Observatory Networks" (APRON) Project, sponsored by the European Commission (DG TREN). The objective of this report was fourfold: - To identify the stakeholders and interest groups involved in the formulation and implementation of the airport decision-making process; - To develop a data collection template / instrument for the elicitation of the information requirements and preferred system features / functionalities; - To elicit and analyse the information requirements capable of "feeding" / supporting different elements of the airport decision making process in the form of a consolidated and prioritised indicator list, and - To analyse the user perceptions and attitudes with respect to the preferred functionalities and modules of the airport observatory network / platform. In order to develop and implement the airport observatory network, the following elements have been identified: - The stakeholders involved in and affected by the airport operation, their objectives, and their "positioning" in the airport decision making process; - The information required with respect to the availability of the data needed for supporting their decision making process, and - The legal, institutional and technological issues that are related to the operation of such a development. The summary results per geographical area covered by WP2 participants provide some first indication of the information requirements (and their characteristics) elicited by the superset of stakeholders surveyed in all geographical areas / countries. The major outcome of these summary reports was the development of a tentative indicator list that incorporates the information requirements in the form of specific indicators. This indicator list reflects the result (i.e., information requirements) of the interview / survey process by including also information on the data characterisation, importance / priority, data owner / source, units of measurement, format, data granularity, harmonised indicator definitions etc., as this was elicited from the airport stakeholders in all covered geographical areas. In addition, the indicator list was enriched and further validated by a large audience of airport directors mainly from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, while this recurring activity with the participation of airports will be continued throughout WP3 in order to validate, refine, and formalise the list of indicators to be collected accordingly.
The results of the work package have been encouraging such that all participating airports accepted the framework. Therefore the concept will be enriched and used to set up an information system for a restricted number of participating airports. This will be a commercial platform allowing: - To upload, download and display information, - To use online analysis instruments and - To use online simulation tools covering strategic, tactic and political issues. A first version is implemented and in the test phase. Summary: The start up analysis showed: - The main stakeholders are the EU policy makers and the airports - The main operational entity is an airport observatory and - The fundamental service that the airport observatory should provide is the easy access to timely information. These main points have been further analysed as wants by each stakeholder: - The EU policy makers want information on the air sector, specifically on airports and the airport system - The airports want more direct involvement in the formulation of policies concerning the air sector - Both want information. Information is more than just data. Information is data plus meaning, e.g., an analysis of data producing a catchment area of an airport - Both have been interviewed concerning the information they are interested in which was finalised in an indicator list In order to match these wants, the stakeholders need to be prepared to share or give ensuring an overall equilibrium and a self-sustaining system. The resulting gives are: - The EU policy makers accept more readiness to communicate with the other stakeholders concerning any aspect of policy formulation and accept to be more ready to integrate suggestions from the other stakeholders into the policy formulation process and the readiness to provide and actual supplying of timely data and information - The airports accept readiness to provide and actual supplying of timely data and information - The stakeholders converge in the APRON Observatory and use it for direct communication (i.e. by using a communication service provided by the APRON Observatory e.g., a web forum etc) or indirect communication by allowing dissemination (within the community of the APRON Observatory participants) of analyses based on the provided data / information. The immediate value added (apart from providing the direct wants for data or influence) from the wants and give of each stakeholder is that the APRON Observatory will be a platform of discussion based on facts. This will lead to a better-aligned, balanced and concerted transport policy. The system of giving and taking, i.e. reciprocity leads to a win-win situation for all parties. The APRON Observatory itself should be a central web-based service, which is accessible to the participants of the APRON Observatory community. Its main function is to be an information portal, which retrieves requested information, data or analyses based on data (supplied by mainly the participating airports) and to be the communication portal for the EU policy makers to share information concerning the (ongoing) policy formulation processes. Additionally the APRON Observatory will provide other analyses that are not provided by participants. For this specific purpose it will be necessary for the APRON Observatory to maintain an own database with data from the participants that is updated continually or when notified of changes, in order to maintain the rule, that all analyses are based on timely data and information. The provision of additional analyses also induces the necessity for the APRON Observatory to be more than just a web portal it is an informational portal that will continually update and enhance the information that can be retrieved from it. Other participants not providing any data / information will also be allowed access, but at a restricted level. Basically, this means, only aggregated information can be retrieved and not any detailed information. Of course the APRON Management and the APRON Advisory Group will assign the appropriate level of granularity at their discretion after taking into account all restrictions. This means, that in specific circumstances particular non-providing participants can be assigned better levels of granularity. The EU policy makers and the airports are two further fundamental entities of the APRON Observatory system. This system will additionally enclose other trusted participants in a network of competence to provide additional services. The APRON Observatory system will emanate from three operational concepts: - The APRON General License - The contract for participants providing data and information and - The contract for participants not providing data and information. A basic economic framework that is necessary to make the APRON Observatory system self-sustainable, economically, complements these elements.
Within the general context this work package, after the data collection and validation process of WP 3, had to check the information in order to ensure a maximum of applicability of use as a source for policy formulation purposes, with respect to the evaluation and planning for the European airport system as well as a continuous high quality information platform has to be established which in consequence will only work if data providers accept the security standards to allow for confidentiality and / or anonymity of sensitive data. Therefore a general mapping of use cases and indicators to policy issues had been undertaken. As the cardinality of the connections between policy issue and use case as well as policy issue to indicator is many-to-many there cannot be a one-to-one mapping. In consequence a few examples mapping or rather a meaningful and reasonable mapping between policy issue and use cases and indicators had been worked out. This allows a potential user of the indicators and data to see one meaningful possible mapping of necessary indicators to "answer" a policy question and to contribute to a transport policy formulation process. Specifically: a number of use cases are defined in chapter 3. These cover a wide scope of aspects including: Airport Design, Airport Classification, Airport Productivity Analysis, Market Structure Analysis, Airport Ranking, Market Development / Strategic Planning, Operational Performance vs. Impact Assessment / Operational Performance Assessment Use Case, Investment Data Exploitation, Policy Formulation. The contents of a use case was specified in general terms as well for guidance when writing down the use case. The specified list of use cases follow broadly this specification. Therefore the specified use cases are broadly similar in structure. The use cases give examples for several aspects of policy needs consequently covering - Applicability of the observatory's data as a source for policy formulation, - Allowing the evaluation and planning for an European airport system, - Providing a continuous high quality information platform. Furthermore the data access, ownership etc. have been discussed. Here tables have been produced specifying exactly which indicators are available from the APRON Observatory and indicating the reasons why some indicators are not available. For the continuation of APRON a sub-set of indicators has been identified, which is most beneficial for a standard survey. Even when indicators are not available the interest was strong in making available contact persons at airports dealing with specific topics that opens the possibility for contacts on a bilateral base. The indicators computed with the help of algorithms, simulation routines and models have been evaluated as very important and therefore remained unchanged. Finally it was stated which of the information available in the observatory database should be available for policy purposes without any restriction and which ones are classified by the data owners as sensitive and therefore confidential and just accessible along the security rules. The conclusion showed that nearly all data, information and indicators are evaluated such that access should be allowed for the policy level. Just a minority of restrictions have been identified concerning investment, privatisation and performance indicators related to financial issues as well as information concerning transfer passengers. Such information have been evaluated as confidential by the airports, so that the access has to be restricted by the reciprocity rule. In addition the flight-by-flight data is confidential and only to be used for the internal routines to produce indicators.
This document has been produced within the framework of WP5 ("IT-Prototype Validation") of the "Aviation Policy information Resources based on Observatory Networks" (APRON) Project, sponsored by the European Commission (DG TREN). The objective of this report is to present the results of the evaluation process of the APRON observatory. The evaluation has taken place in two distinct phases: - Laboratory testing; - Demonstration testing. The assessment of the APRON system during the Laboratory Testing Phase suggested that: - The technical performance of the APRON system has exceeded the established performance levels for the established indicators. - The user acceptance assessment demonstrates that the overall performance of the system in terms of its major functionalities is between “average” and “high”. The assessment of the APRON system during the Demonstration Phase has produced the following results: - The technical performance of the system under real-life conditions is satisfactory and has surpassed the established acceptance values. - The user acceptance assessment results demonstrate that the overall performance of the system in terms of its major functionalities is between “average” and “high”. - The APRON system was found to be cost-effective both by the entirety of the users who have participated in the Cost-Effectiveness Assessment and on a per-country basis. The overall impression about the APRON system as this is reflected in D5 report was that it fulfils its objectives in terms of user acceptance and technical performance and that it provides the airport stakeholders with a cost-effective way to access data based on a one-stop shop concept.
This is the very heart of the APRON project. Based on the user requirements that have been defined in WP2, demand data, airport infrastructure data, investment data, accessibility data, etc have been collected from sources indicated in WP1 and from the airports that participate in the project. The data have been checked and validated and stored in a structured way in the APRON databank. The first step in WP3 was to define the set of Indicators to be actually collected. This new list has been drawn up after ample discussion within the Consortium and with the Advisory Board. Part of the data is collected from Eurostat (e.g. passenger, cargo and aircraft movements), Eurocontrol (e.g. flight information), or other centralised sources, but for a large part from the airports. For the data collection from the airports a survey template has been developed. Eurostat Eurostat co-operated on all levels in all matters. The requested information that is already validated has been provided as soon as they have been released internally. So the following data are or will be available at the Apron server: - Aviation statistics 2000 and 2001 provided - Aviation statistics 2002 have been released mid of October 2004, which was to late to be included - Aviation statistics 2003 are not available up to now and therefore could not be included - Socio-economic statistics Eurocontrol (flight data) To generate approximately 100 indicators flight schedule data are necessary. To test the approach of APRON some test data have been provided. For the months October 2002, July and October 2003 the data have been made available. Another test sample has been provided for July 2004 but the airline information is missing so that the computation of services could not be done. As response Eurocontrol received a first analysis so that the use of data is made transparent. A special file was generated containing all items how the flight-by-flight data are used. Eurocontrol (other data) In general it was said that Eurocontrol is willing to co-operate and to provide information on an aggregated level No airline specific information can be released. Also the contact details of their data provider have to be secured as otherwise they risk their data access. Concerning the delay information available Eurocontrol has provided the information according to definition used by them. In consequence one has to read the definition carefully as this is a more technical focus directed towards the air navigation purposes while the consumer perspective might be quite different. Concerning the IFR and VFR aircraft movements no accurate values are available at Eurocontrol but based on a hypothesis which assigns different aircrafts to the categories indicators could be provided if necessary later on. No information is available about aircraft movements per noise category (Cat I and II) and the utilisation of radar vectoring. Information concerning aircraft incident and accidents are very sensitive and Eurocontrol itself evaluates the available information as incomplete. Such sensitive issues will not be made available to APRON in detail via web, but just per country like already published by Eurocontrol. Other sources Data from the following other sources have been made available to APRON: - ACI / Eurocontrol airport survey - Seabird - Seaplane Airport survey The airport survey could be organised at 12 airports in 5 countries: - Germany: München, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin-Tegel - Austria: Vienna - Spain: Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona - France: Toulouse, Nice - Greece: Athens International Airport, Heraklion Evaluation of the airport survey - An evaluation of the survey is available per subtask and per airport. There is a wide variety in the response rates per subtask and per airport and there exist a wide variety of reasons why questions could not be answered. Computed indicators Some indicators have been computed using the information of other indicators. Data validation The data validation has been carried out for the data collected in the airport survey. This phase was co-ordinated by NEA, who did the actual validation, formulated questions to the data collecting partners and finally corrected the forms to be sent to FhG. Database FhG as responsible partner for database implementation provided its product WebGenesis as base for the APRON specific IT tasks to be carried out. WebGenesis is a database-supported and fully web-based information system framework. The data here above described collected from Eurostat, Eurocontrol and other general sources and from the airports are uploaded to the databank. Dedicated access and retrieval possibilities have been developed and have been made operational.
The result represents the results of the work performed by all project partners in WP1 (Review of Existing Information and Information Sources). The final goal of the project is establishing an Observatory of airport-related data, mainly for policy-making purposes. The report describes airport information found in WP1 survey for a substantial part of European airports and organisations related to them. The analysis of those sources includes the kind of data available and some relevant conditions for their use. One of the major challenges faced by the APRON project was to convince the airports to provide access to their data through the use of the observatory. To facilitate this task APRON has been using two concepts to stimulate participation: In the first place, the "win-win" situation as defined in the project Technical Annex. This concept supports a project approach and project results in which all contributors give something and get something in return. In the second, the "Snow-ball" effect which means that the Observatory must have a minimal "critical mass" of participants and information in order to invite other potential contributors to join. The scope of the survey included the countries of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland. Notwithstanding, some information regarding potential sources and contacts are given for candidate countries to join the EU. The addressees of this work package are: - The European Commission. - Other WP's within APRON. - APRON Advisory Board. - Other airport related projects. - Stakeholders and organisations related to this sector. - Other actors concerned with this kind of data. A final summary remark could be made about the purpose of APRON and this document in particular. The objectives of the project and the consortium working in it serve the general interest of the community more than in many other cases. This fact has been well understood by present contributors to whom APRON must give credit for making the project advance toward its goal.
The result of workpackage 8 is Deliverable D10 of the project APRON. It was acknowledged that the successful design, implementation and operation of an airport observatory requires the active participation of all relevant stakeholders throughout the project life-cycle for materialising the participation of all interested stakeholders. The initial concept of the advisory board was to involve high level airport executives in all stages of the observatory development through their participation in regularly scheduled meetings. Since the beginning of the project, it was found out that the participation of the stakeholders in the form of an advisory board was not workable, and therefore, the original concept was modified (mostly in terms of the composition and modus operandi of the advisory board) while the expected and contribution was not changed in substance. The involvement of the stakeholders was secured since the project inception through the signing of a letter of intent and it was continued throughout the life-cycle of the project through the participation of technical experts representing airports and international organisations like ACI-Europe, Eurostat, Eurocontrol and ADV. The experts provided guidance on issues related to the content and functionality of the observatory, as well as on issues regarding the observatory participation and access rules. The participation of the technical experts representing the stakeholders was instrumental for the development and future operation and led to substantial improvements during the observatory design and implementation. The stakeholders provided essential feedback during the last project workshop. The provided feedback reconfirmed the need for establishing a European Airport observatory and it stressed the need to increase the participation of more European Airports in the observatory. The observatory functionalities and data content were found to be appropriate and the principles of reciprocity in providing and using data included in the observatory was found to be both practical and workable. Furthermore, the issue of hosting and managing the observatory was addressed and the need of establishing a strong business case for convincing a third trusted party to undertake the responsibility of hosting and managing the observatory was stressed.

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