The mid-term progress meeting of the TITAN project was held on 24-25 May 2011 near Frankfurt at project partner Jeppesen’s European headquarters. The meeting was well attended and was of special significance also on account of the fact that TITAN was introduced for the first time to its new European Commission project officer Mr. Remy Denos.
The meeting took place in the company boardroom, under the watchful eyes of near life-size portraits of Mr. Jeppesen and Mr. Sanderson, the two icons of aeronautical information mapping and management.
Having this meeting at Jeppesen was in part indicative also of the very real progress TITAN was achieving. One of the future deliverables of the project, the TITAN Tool will be created by Jeppesen with input of the project partners of course and the time is now approaching when the tool will become more than just a paper product. Much more in fact. Users of this tool will get a uniquely focused and detailed view of the aircraft ground turnaround process, enabling them to anticipate and mitigate problems that may arise and hence avoid disruptions of the turnaround. A tool that can make this happen can save airlines a lot of money while also benefiting airports and handling organizations.
Of course a lot of work remains.
Participants of the meeting got a brief overview of the progress being made in the various work packages and the picture emerging was very encouraging indeed. Modeling and validation of the concept was well advanced and there were no showstoppers. With the devil always in the detail, there were of course a number of issues that needed resolution and some questions that needed to be answered but these were taken care of during the meeting.
Jeppesen showed the first mock-up of the user interface the TITAN tool might get and this, though still rudimentary, already showed the power of TITAN to generate new information for decision makers to use in the operational, real time optimization of the turnaround process.
For the first time the operational services defined for TITAN also became visible via the scenarios developed to support the validation exercises. It is of course one thing to say that a tool you are creating will be service oriented and quite another to actually make that happen. The designers of TITAN have taken service orientation very seriously and it is the TITAN services (of which five have been identified initially) that will make the real difference compared to a traditional collaborative decision making environment (there will be a separate article in the near future about these services and what they do). As befits services as parts of a Service Oriented Architecture, the TITAN services will be reusable across the ATM enterprise, making implementation of TITAN at different locations easier and more cost effective while also opening up their power to other applications that need what the TITAN services perform. Possibly future music at this point but the potential is built into TITAN at no extra cost.
A three year research project now into its 18th month, the future looks good for TITAN. Of course, the more the work enters the detail design phase, the more difficult the going will become but with the thorough, no-nonsense approach in the earlier phases, a very good basis has been created to take the upcoming challenges in stride.
It was difficult not to feel the enthusiasm of all the companies involved, for what they were creating. Questions and concerns were always raised and answered in a constructive manner, you could say in a true CDM spirit.
Stand by for more information from TITAN in the coming months.
You can read more abut TITAN here.
