The mission of ICARUS is to be a one-stop-shop for aviation data and intelligence reaching a rich ecosystem of data and data providers also focusing on trust and security, supported by a strong Open Data/Source commitment. In this blog post, we provide an insight into the innovative ICARUS value propositions and business models ICARUS is developing with the aim to use all of the exciting innovations being developed in the project to become a key player in the Big Data Aviation market.
The current Aviation scenario
To be able to sustain this ambition, ICARUS partners are shaping a business vision and creating strong Value Propositions aligned with current market trends and needs. From our recent market analyses, we have learned that the aviation market still keeps rising: at the beginning of 2019, Boeing reported that air travel demand and spending have grown, with arrivals increasing of 6% in 2018 and more than 700 million tourist arrivals expected by 2029. Airport congestion is definitely a hot challenge, especially in Europe where capacity is heavily regulated. This opens interesting opportunities for smart, data-driven services and optimisations. Indeed, it is expected that services will have constituted one third of the $908 billion world airline spending forecast in 2019.
According to the analyses ICARUS partners have carried out some of the hot topics and trends for aviation and aviation data opportunities are:
- Services market strong and data services for mitigating capacity issue
- Services will be more and more digital services with a central role of data
- Big Data is a desired but still an open and uncapped market in aviation
- Aviation being a multi-stakeholder domain requires rich data-flow solutions
- Technical and Legal challenges will heavily shape big data aviation requirements
- Big data has the potential to make aviation greener
A strong Value Proposition for aviation data stakeholders
Indeed, when considering the above trends and when talking about ‘aviation’, we actually consider a rich and diverse ecosystem of stakeholders ranging from manufacturers to MRO providers, from airports to airport service providers and from airlines to passengers. In shaping the best business models for ICARUS, we have carried out a bottom-up approach in terms of Value Proposition (also with the help and insights offered by our aviation business partners) dividing out users in two main categories with have potentially different focuses and, therefore, business requirements: aviation data providers and aviation data consumers.
The distinction is obviously somewhat artificial, and serves the need to clearly define priorities and features, but it is clear how the same stakeholder can be included in both categories: think of an airline generating huge masses of data from its connected fleets and at the same time consuming amounts of diverse data which enables it to carry out smooth operations.
Data Providers
Typically an aviation Data Provider need to increase its competitiveness, improve its operations and create new products and revenue streams while staying at the forefront of innovation. From a more emotional/instinctive perspective (an element always relevant in buying decisions, even at corporate levels), a data provider practically wants to monetize his/her data assets, to increase their visibility / outreach, to securely share / trade them and to effectively reduce the time-to-sale. The typical fears a data provider has when deciding to adopt a data platform like ICARUS can be summarized as: platform sustainability, security and data breach protection (“how do you safeguard the platform?”), trust and liability (“who is legally responsible if something goes wrong?”), cost for entry and use, integration with existing systems, market manipulation (“how do you handle competition on the same data / applications?”) and positive ROI (“when do I expect to get a return-on-investment?”).
In ICARUS we aim to offer a number of features to data providers to meet their needs while assuaging fears, including data check-in through an on-premise environment for end-to-end security, data encryption, advanced access control, effective data linking, trusted data sharing through a blockchain-enabled contracting mechanism, and an aviation data and intelligence marketplace. Ultimately, the overall ICARUS product experience for a data provider is characterized as effortless, cost-effective, intuitive and easy-to-use, secure and trustful, seamless, and with high quality of service.
Data Consumers
A Data Consumer has similar needs as a data provider from a specular point of view, and wants to get access to data assets (datasets, algorithms and applications), use (or reuse) the aviation domain knowledge, combine / link / analyse own and external (purchased or public) data assets, pay for the infrastructures and data that he/she uses and have a clear understanding of the licensing and terms of use. In addition to the fears that a data provider has expressed, a data consumer also fears the possibility of low data quality and quantity that will prevent it from finding what is needed, and of low accuracy of the analytics.
With ICARUS, we offer features that are particularly oriented to data consumers and include data querying and exploration, data analytics, data visualization, trusted data acquisition, deployment of secure private spaces for analytics, data recommendations, within the ICARUS aviation data and intelligence marketplace. Ultimately, like for the data provider, the overall ICARUS product experience for a data consumer is aimed to be effortless, cost-effective, intuitive and easy-to-use, secure and trustful, seamless, and with high quality of service.
Discover some of the innovative Big Data services ICARUS is developing for the Aviation market and that comprise the ICARUS value propositions: ICARUS MVP, Data Management in ICARUS, Data Safeguarding in ICARUS, Data Analytics in ICARUS, among others.
Blog post prepared by ENG.
Featured Image by Arie Wubben on Unsplash
