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AWS Solutions Library

Guidance for Building a Digital Twin for Airport & Airline Operations on AWS

Overview

This Guidance shows how historical and current operational data, which has been captured with internet of Things (IoT) devices and camera streams, can be viewed simultaneously by constructing a digital twin. It supports multiple layers of data visualization, each tailored to the specific needs of airline operations. Passenger flow management, baggage handling, predictive maintenance for equipment, tracking movable assets, aircraft turnaround management, and a Building Management System (BMS) can all be integrated for optimal operations.

How it works

These technical details feature an architecture diagram to illustrate how to effectively use this solution. The architecture diagram shows the key components and their interactions, providing an overview of the architecture's structure and functionality step-by-step.

Download the architecture diagram

Well-Architected Pillars

The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.

This Guidance lets you use an Amazon CloudFormation template or an AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) for scripts, so you can quickly and safely deploy changes and updates to your workloads. By using infrastructure-as-code tools, you can automate deployment and security checks for all infrastructure and software updates. For observability, you can use Amazon CloudWatch, which provides level metrics and personalized dashboards and logs. You can then set up dashboards and alarms to notify you when your environment is not operating as expected. You can even set up automatic workflows to remediate certain states.

Read the Operational Excellence whitepaper

This Guidance uses AWS IoT Core to securely connect all IoT devices to AWS. The service encrypts all communication and requires all its clients (connected devices, server applications, mobile applications, or human users) to use strong authentication (including X.509 certificates, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) credentials, or third-party authentication through Amazon Cognito). AWS IoT Core also offers fine-grained authorization to isolate and secure communication among authenticated clients.

This Guidance also uses Amazon Managed Grafana, which lets you control and restrict incoming traffic that can reach your workspace. It also encrypts data at rest without special configuration or third-party tools and encrypts data in transit using SSL.

Read the Security whitepaper

This Guidance uses AWS Panorama so that devices can run machine learning (ML) models locally while also sending data to the cloud for further processing. This edge ML deployment reduces your dependency on cloud connectivity, improving reliability and reducing downtime risks.

Read the Reliability whitepaper

This Guidance uses AWS IoT SiteWise, which efficiently processes a large volume of machine data at scale to help you derive insights faster. Additionally, AWS IoT TwinMaker improves efficiency by accelerating digital twin creation through prebuilt components, templates, and automation.

Read the Performance Efficiency whitepaper

This Guidance helps you optimize data storage costs by using Amazon S3, which provides features like life cycle policies and S3 Intelligent-Tiering to automatically move data to the most cost-effective tiers, such as S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval.

Read the Cost Optimization whitepaper

This Guidance reduces the need to connect to the cloud continuously by using AWS IoT Greengrass, which deploys ML models and logic to devices to facilitate autonomous operations locally. This lets devices perform compute, messaging, data caching, syncing, and ML inferencing at the edge, helping you minimize your power usage and reduce your carbon footprint. 

Read the Sustainability whitepaper

Disclaimer

The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.

References to third-party services or organizations in this Guidance do not imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between Amazon or AWS and the third party. Guidance from AWS is a technical starting point, and you can customize your integration with third-party services when you deploy the architecture.