Industry 4.0 : challenges and success factors for adopting digital technologies in airports

With the advent of Industry 4.0 technologies in the last decade, airports have undergone digitalisation to capitalise on the purported benefits of these technologies such as improved operational efficiency and passenger experience. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with emergence of its variants (e.g. Delta, Omicron) has exacerbated the need for airports to adopt new technologies such as contactless and robotic technologies to facilitate travel during this pandemic. However, there is limited knowledge of recent challenges and success factors for adoption of digital technologies in airports. Therefore, through an industry survey of airport operators and managers around the world (n=102, 0.75

A holistic review of cybersecurity and reliability perspectives in smart airports

Advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and aviation sector have resulted in the emergence of smart airports. Services and systems powered by the IoT enable smart airports to have enhanced robustness, efficiency and control, governed by real-time monitoring and analytics. Smart sensors control the environmental conditions inside the airport, automate passenger-related actions and support airport security. However, these augmentations and automation introduce security threats to network systems of smart airports. Cyber-attackers demonstrated the susceptibility of IoT systems and networks to Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), due to hardware constraints, software flaws or IoT misconfigurations. With the increasing complexity of attacks, it is imperative to safeguard IoT networks of smart airports and ensure reliability of services, as cyber-attacks can have tremendous consequences such as disrupting networks, cancelling travel, or stealing sensitive information. There is a need to adopt and develop new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled cyber-defence techniques for smart airports, which will address the challenges brought about by the incorporation of IoT systems to the airport business processes, and the constantly evolving nature of contemporary cyber-attacks. In this study, we present a holistic review of existing smart airport applications and services enabled by IoT sensors and systems. Additionally, we investigate several types of cyber defence tools including AI and data mining techniques, and analyse their strengths and weaknesses in the context of smart airports. Furthermore, we provide a classification of smart airport sub-systems based on their purpose and criticality and address cyber threats that can affect the security of smart airport\u27s networks

Change detection in combination with spatial models and its effectiveness on underwater scenarios

This thesis proposes a novel change detection approach for underwater scenarios and combines it with different especially developed spatial models, this allows accurate and spatially coherent detection of any moving objects with a static camera in arbitrary environments. To deal with the special problems of underwater imaging pre-segmentations based on the optical flow and other special adaptions were added to the change detection algorithm so that it can better handle typical underwater scenarios like a scene crowded by a whole fish swarm

The Application of the Human-Biometric Sensor Interaction Method to Automated Border Control Systems

Biometrics components are used in many different systems and technologies to verify that the user is whom they say they are. In Automated Border Control systems, biometrics components used in conjunction with a traveller's documents to make sure the user is whom they say they are so that they can cross into a countries borders. The systems are expected to verify the identity with a higher degree than officers who manually check travellers. Each year the number of travellers crossing through a country borders increases and so systems are expected to handle bigger demands; through improving the user experience to ensuring accuracy and performance standards increase. While the system does bring its benefits through increased speed and higher security, there are drawbacks. One of the main issues with the systems is a lack of standardisation across implementations. Passing through an automated process at Heathrow may be different to Hong Kong. The infrastructure, information, environment and guidance given during the transaction will all greatly differ for the user. Furthermore, the individual components and subsequent processing will be evaluated using a different methodology too. This thesis reports on the contrasts between implementations, looking at solutions which utilise different biometric modalities and travel documents. Several models are devised to establish a process map which can be applied to all systems. Investigating further, a framework is described for a novel assessment method to evaluate the performance of a system. An RGB-D sensor is implemented, to track and locate the user within an interactive environment. By doing so, the user's interaction is assessed in real-time. Studies then report on the effectiveness of the solution within a replicated border control scenario. Several relationships are studied to improve the technologies used within the scenario. Successful implementation of the automated assessment method may improve the user's experience with systems, improving information and guidance, increasing the likelihood of successful interaction while maintaining a high level of security and quicker processing times