# Airport Data Integration Layer The connective tissue of modern airport operations. A complete operational picture requires real-time data from at minimum twelve source categories, each from a different vendor, using different protocols, updating at different frequencies. ## The Twelve Sources 1. [[Airport Operational Database]] / Resource Management Systems (flight schedules, stand allocations, resource assignments) 2. Weather services (METAR, TAF, nowcasting for wind, visibility, precipitation) 3. AFTN/AMHS (Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunications Network: flight plan messages, slot messages, departure/arrival messages) 4. ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System: real-time aircraft position and ETA updates from the aircraft itself) 5. A-SMGCS (surface movement tracking: where every aircraft and vehicle is on the ground right now) 6. ATC systems (clearances, sequence positions, runway assignments) 7. Parking and ground transport (landside vehicle flow, public transport connections) 8. Check-in and baggage systems (passenger processing throughput, bag reconciliation status) 9. Security screening (lane throughput, queue lengths, wait times) 10. Landside transportation (bus, rail, ride-share arrival patterns feeding terminal demand forecasting) 11. Immigration and border control (processing rates, queue status) 12. Environmental sensors (noise monitoring, air quality, emissions tracking) ## The Protocol Zoo IATA Type B messages for aviation messaging. ASTERIX format for radar and surveillance. Proprietary APIs for each vendor's system. MQTT and AMQP for IoT-style sensor data. REST and SOAP for enterprise integrations. Each protocol has different latency characteristics, reliability guarantees, and data models. ## The Information Broker Pattern The modern architectural answer: an Information Broker middleware that normalizes all sources into a single data model that every downstream application (A-CDM, PDS, TMS, dashboards, KPI engines) consumes. Rather than point-to-point integrations between every system pair (which scales quadratically), a single normalization layer that every system connects to once. This is the same pattern as [[Knowledge Graphs for Industrial Data]] in process manufacturing: don't replace the source systems, contextualize them. See [[Airport Systems Fragmentation]] for why this is so hard and [[data gravity]] for why whoever builds this layer becomes hard to displace. Related: [[Airport Operations MOC]], [[Airport Systems Fragmentation]], [[Airport Operational Database]], [[data gravity]], [[Knowledge Graphs for Industrial Data]] --- Tags: #deeptech #systems