Today, aviation is among the most vibrant, technology-driven and data-intensive industries in Europe, with its digital transformation at the verge of taking off. As air traffic is staggeringly increasing with each passing year, an unprecedented volume, diversity and richness of aviation data is acquired, generated and managed by many different aviation stakeholders. Such data provides unique capabilities for all aviation-related industries, yet its pertaining value still remains to be unlocked!

In this context, the ICARUS project was launched in January 1st, 2018 with the overarching purpose of addressing core challenges related to Data Sharing, Data Linking and Data Analytics in the multi-level aviation data value chain. In the early inception of the ICARUS concept, we had anticipated the huge potential that the aviation data value chain holds, but we had not imagined the multidimensional, data-related problems it currently faces to their full spectrum. To put it in a nutshell, many different stakeholders are in need of aviation-related data and its deriving intelligence, yet there is currently very little data diffusion, sharing and linking between and across the different stakeholders of the aviation-related sectors.

Over the past months, we have worked on multiple, parallel directions, trying to… better understand the needs of the aviation data value chain, … define our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – to be delivered by the end of the project – and discuss its features with external stakeholders beyond our consortium, … consolidate the theoretical foundations and the approaches underpinning the ICARUS platform, and … effectively design an aviation big data platform that is attuned to the requirements of the industry and its actual data value chain.

As our activities have significantly progressed and our development team is currently working around the clock to deliver our beta platform release in June 2019 and launch it during the IATA Aviation Data Symposium & AI Lab, it is about time we, as a consortium, started blogging in order to openly share our perspectives and our initial results. Weekly blog posts will be featured in our website from now on, so stay tuned!

Post prepared by: Dr. Fenareti Lampathaki (Suite5) – ICARUS Technical Coordinator & Dr. Dimitris Alexandrou (UBITECH) – ICARUS Project Coordinator