RFID and aero-domains
secura
substantial benefits to the Air Transport Community in the form of
cost reductions, improvements in productivity, customer services and
safety, but also as a means to generate new revenues. As an emerging
technology there are still many barriers to community-wide adoption,
one of them being the risk associated with the deployment of RFID
infrastructure and development of applications. This is a risk that
can be substantially reduced through the introduction of a shared
infrastructure and service.
But how does this relate to aero-domains and how can .aero leverage
RFID to add extra value to partners across the air transport
community?
Shared services offer one crucial advantage. By sharing infrastructure
and know-how to operate business processes common to many in the Air
Transport community, individual members can cut the cost of building
data processing networks for common processes and instead focus on
differentiation and the provision of innovative, reliable services to
passengers and cargo customers. The same logic applies to adoption of
RFID technology, and it is only a matter of time before community
services and shared facilities for processing RFID data are
introduced.
A number of RFID projects are already under way, but these are mostly
one company activities – such as RFID-based baggage handling to speed
up processing and accuracy at an airport (e.g. Hong Kong) or the
tracking of cargo containers by one carrier or alliance (e.g.
Lufthansa's joint venture with Trenstar). Some early adopters in the
air transport community can demonstrate business cases for investment
in RFID technology on their own, while others struggle. As a result,
today's deployment of RFID technology will not help a bag stranded in
a foreign airport find its way to its destination and a container will
be only tracked if it moves through the premises of the airline/
handling company which tagged it.
However, the community expects that, every piece of baggage will be
tracked eventually with the help of RFID technology, perhaps from the
traveller's home or office through to its destination. While RFID
offers the potential of improvement in the processing of bags at the
airport (RFID readers read more reliably than bar code readers without
a line of sight constraint), the greatest benefit of the technology
will be its ability to be integrated with existing IT systems .
Technology, coupled with community standards, will allow systems at
any airport to identify immediately and automatically a mishandled
piece of baggage, collect handling instructions from the airline
responsible for the bag and route it to its correct destination.
Similar benefits and more are expected from handling cargo and
containers such as ULDs,(unit loading devices ) or the management of
other asses, used at the airport (e.g. vehicles of all kind) or within
an aircraft ( e.g. catering trolleys, flight jackets, oxygen tanks
etc..)
Boeing and Airbus are promoting the RFID tagging of aircraft parts, to
allow tracking and tracing, to facilitate maintenance and to ensure
that no grey parts enter the market.
The benefits of the technology are clear. However, historically the
deployment of community-based technologies is slow. The global supply
chain is moving ahead with implementation of RFID, but this is often
driven by one major player in the supply chain (such as Wal-Mart). The
air transport community is different. It is much more homogenous and
standards are set by consensus rather than by the mandate of an
influential player. Consequently, investment in infrastructure is
often shared among community members sharing a common process or
processes.
Obtaining consensus and joint investment is currently putting the
brakes on the deployment of RFID within the Air Transport community.
SITA is working with Air Transport community, as well as in
partnership with relevant experts (such as the Cambridge UK-based
Aerospace ID Technologies Programme launched by Auto ID Labs) to
define the community service model allowing flexibility and choice
whilst ensuring that the community benefits from shared facilities. At
the heart of this model are two sets of community services – those at
shared locations such as airports and those that allow multiple
business partners to securely interact with each other globally. SITA
is defining the technical details and will be setting up a pilot
project.
And what about .aero?
When the aero-domain was launched, some considered as crazy the idea
that an aircraft seat or an individual item of baggage might each have
its own IP address. But the idea was not as far fetched as it may
seem. In fact, when Auto ID Labs designed the first version of the
RFID data processing standard, they assigned a domain name to every RF
identifier to allow processing of data over the world's biggest
network - the Internet.
Today, the standards are going through many changes, and it may be
that not every object will actually require a domain name. It has
already become clear, however, that some naming structure will be
required to trace these objects – and more likely than not, each will
have its own IP address.
This is where the aero-domain as a policy platform comes into play.
While the aero-domain is not itself involved in implementation of RFID
technology, the .aero policy framework could be used as a robust
platform, enabling the community to maintain policies relating to
allocation of digital identifiers. Additionally .aero might also
manage the registry service associated with these identifiers,
thereby making the RFID signal data much more useable.
Hans-Peter Oswald
http://www.domainregistry.de/aero-domain.html