UFIS Airports Solutions’ (UFIS-AS) and its partner Dubai Technology Partners are pleased to announce that it has been awarded the contract to supply a multi-airport airport operational database (AODB) and resource management system by the Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC). The scope also includes the provision of the system integration for three airports as well as a data warehouse and business intelligence.

The central system will be UFIS-AS’s universal flight information system (UFIS®). When the system goes into operation it will provide a true multi-airport database managing the flight-data for the three airports: Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Bateen. It will be possible to manage the data for the airports from one data centre located in Abu Dhabi. In the unlikely event of a complete communications failure between the airports, local systems at Al Ain and Al Bateen will allow operations to continue normally. Once communications are restored the data will be synchronised and central operation will be resumed.

The UFIS package for ADAC includes an airport operational database (AODB), a basic data processing system, a flight information management system (FIMS), a resource management system (RMS) and the UFIS® information broker (UFIS-IB).

FIMS is used to manage long and short-term flight schedules and updates these schedules in real-time, including actual times and load data, for all flights operating or being handled at the three airports. One essential source of information is IATA type B messages that are received via an interface. UFIS® interprets these messages as well as messages that come via the interfaces to ATC, airline and ground-handling systems and updates the database accordingly.

The resource management system dynamically allocates resources to flights based on the flight and transfer information, the physical restrictions of the particular resource and a set of rules which reflect the service agreements between the airlines and the airport.

As a foundation, UFIS-IB will use IBM’s WebSphere products for system integration. "Using WebSphere as the basis for the integration," said Abdul Razzak Mikati, managing director of DTP, "will mean that we will provide a defacto industry-standard integration platform that will enable easy integration of the systems currently in the scope as well as new systems in the future."

"We are excited and honoured that ADAC chose to award this contract to DTP and UFIS," added Holger Mattig, president and CEO of UFIS-AS. "We look forward to providing an integrated environment between ADAC’s three airports so that all airport stakeholders can benefit from automated data processing and increased operational data accuracy."

To provide the airports’ management with the required data, DTP will also provide a data warehouse solution based on IBM Infosphere and tools to generate the necessary reports using IBM Cognos BI solution.