Schneider Electric has launched 'IPOC (Integrated Platform Operations Center),' an integrated platform that enables the management of airport infrastructure operations within a single environment. The aim is to enhance real-time operational responsiveness by integrating the existing structure where energy management, facility operations, and asset monitoring have been handled by separate systems.

Schneider Electric announced the launch of IPOC on the 24th and explained that increasing air travel demand, the burden of energy costs, and demands for carbon reduction are emerging as major challenges in airport operations. Airports are facing a situation where they must respond to passenger growth while simultaneously ensuring operational efficiency and sustainability.

IPOC is a platform built on AVEVA software that integrates energy management, automation, and industrial data analysis functions into a single operating environment. It connects airport-wide systems, stakeholders, and key operational processes to enable monitoring of operational status on an integrated screen. It is designed to quickly detect signs of failure and increase response speed.

In particular, the key feature is the ability to adjust energy usage to match airport demand by analyzing real-time energy and operational data together. The explanation is that this enables the implementation of an operating system that considers both energy consumption reduction and carbon emission reduction. Furthermore, by applying a template-based object-oriented architecture to standardize asset models and allow them to be reused across multiple terminals, the scalability of operational standards has been enhanced.

This approach is also confirmed in actual airport operations. Barcelona El Prat Airport adopted a similar AVEVA system platform to integrate 20 existing distributed systems and expand monitoring signals from 35,000 to over 700,000. As a result, terminals, baggage handling, air conditioning, and power generation facilities can now be managed on a single screen, and it has been evaluated that operational efficiency and energy management levels have also improved.

In the future, capabilities for data integration and energy optimization are highly likely to become more critical than simple facility management in airport operations. IPOC can be seen as an example demonstrating the trend of transitioning operational systems to integrated digital infrastructure within the airport industry, which simultaneously faces the challenges of increasing passenger traffic, rising costs, and carbon reduction.