At the cradle of SWIM

SWIM, well the name that is, was born in the early morning on a misty February day in a hotel room in Luxemburg. It was 1998.The abbreviation of System Wide Information Management, SWIM has now become an integral element of both SESAR and NextGen, the air traffic management development projects in Europe and the USA, respectively. Getting here was not easy.
Following the publication of the first issues of the European ATM Operational Concept Document (OCD) and the ATM Strategy for 2000+ it was felt that the wide-ranging and informal discussions that can take place at a workshop would generate valuable additional information to feed subsequent editions of those documents. The workshop took place in February 1998 in Luxemburg.
The air was pregnant with the need to do something about the horribly inefficient manner the sea of information generated by and consumed in air traffic management was being handled.

As early as 1994, at the EATMS User Requirements Workshop, 40 % of the captured requirements were directly expressed in terms of information management needs. This showed clearly that there was a problem with information management in the ATM system. Curiously, hardly anyone noticed this at the time…
A year later in 1995 the “Invariant Process Model” was developed in support of the OCD development. In this information management was identified as one of the key enabling support processes for ATM.
The ATM2000+ Workshop in February 1998 was a five day affair, with the first part targeted at decision makers in the aviation community and involved presentations on the Revised EUROCONTROL Convention, the role of the European Commission and the content of the concept and strategy documents. This was followed by break-out sessions on expert level (also attended by the decision makers) to discuss various subjects of relevance to the strategies.
A separate discussion group was formed to deal with “Information and integration”.
I was working for IATA in Brussels at the time and we came to the workshop armed with the results of previous discussions, all of which pointed to the inescapable need to address information management or risk complete failure of the ATM system as demand rose in the coming years.
The theme of my presentation was  “aircraft flying in a sea of information”.
I had a small role to play in the “Information and integration” group and I can still recall how pleasant the discussions were and how quickly it was possible to build consensus on the most important aspects of information management as it would be practiced in the future. Hartmut, an old friend and a long time apostle of information management was also on board and my happiness about how things were progressing were probably exceeded only by his.
Happiness or not, it was a long and tiring day. Nevertheless, after dinner and with most of the other delegates enjoying a beer somewhere in Luxemburg, we  retired to Hartmut’s room to write the report for next day’s plenary session.
Report writing is the art of putting on paper not what people said but what they thought they said… Having had consensus did not make the task any easier. After all, we had to write up things reflecting exactly what people thought they had agreed to.
The report was coming together slowly but we were also feeling increasingly worn down. Outside it was quiet with the mist depositing little droplets of water on the window panes. The good folk of Luxemburg were asleep, blissfully unaware that history was about to be made.
It was around two thirty in the morning when Hartmut suddenly said: swim! Then again SWIM!
I looked around the place… Yes, we were still in the hotel room and there was no water rushing from the bathroom or through the doors. Not wanting to be left out, I repeated after him: SWIM! But why???
“I have the name for this thing” – Hartmut said – “System Wide Information Management! SWIM. Your presentation about aircraft flying in a sea of information… SWIM!”
And so was the legend born. Next day our report was accepted without any problem and the new term SWIM started its journey into fame.
Afterwards, the concept of information management languished for several years. As a result, a complete new generation of flight data processing systems were built without being foreseen with SWIM type information management.
When we reserve an airline ticket or hotel room, when we chose our seat or when we make a money transfer from the comfort of our den at home, we are practicing SWIM implemented by the travel industry and the banks. There, commercial pressures were enough to force the move. In air traffic management, 10 years were lost for no good reason at all.
SWIM is one of the widest known abbreviations in ATM circles in Europe as well as the US. Its exact meaning is being progressively refined and the first projects aimed at early implementation are with us.
The sea of information is bigger than ever and the number of swimmers is growing all the time…