APOC promises to make the airport’s operations even more effective and resilient.
A new Airport Operations Center (APOC) became fully operational on 24 November at Rome Fiumicino Leonardo Da Vinci Airport. The APOC was designed in 2016 as part of the European SESAR projects relating to air traffic management within a Single European Sky, as an example of technological innovation intended to revolutionise the approach being taken to airport operations.
The airport’s operator, Aeroporti di Roma (AdR), has long made innovation and sustainability pillars of its strategy and it was the APOC’s strong digitalisation that was a major factor in ACI Europe’s decision to award the airport its “Digital Transformation Award 2021”.
According to Aeroporti di Roma CEO, Marco Troncone, Fiumicino has taken “a further step forward in the path towards the airport of the future: the new APOC integrated control centre will allow for an even more effective and greater resilience of airport operations. The technological component will enhance the human factor, as a sign of integration and coordination between all airport operators, which will be able to synergistically manage and monitor all the main processes, from flight operations to the management of passenger and baggage flows”.
The APOC, which represents an investment of more than €20 million, occupies an area of approximately 1,900 m2 and is equipped with systems designed to guarantee operational continuity even in the event of critical issues, including cyber attacks. With 16 control rooms and 112 workstations, the APOC has a single work area so that the airport’s departments can work side by side and efficiently manage all the necessary actions for the smooth running of the airport.
Such actions include the flow of aircraft, the flow of passengers inside and outside the terminals as well as the management of baggage in the two sorting systems which are controlled in real-time.