Resource efficiency
through energy monitoring
and intelligent plant control

•  Airports are no longer just a transport hub, but also a business location
•  Broad spectrum of companies at the location
•  Development into a Smart AirportCity 
•  Expand pioneering role in energy efficiency, sustainability and innovation

Vienna Airport is a mobility hub that handles more than 25 million passengers a year and provides employment for around 20,000 people. Airports around the world are increasingly being seen not only as transport hubs but also as locations for businesses, and new settlements known as "Airport Cities" are being built on the open spaces around airports. The companies settling in AirportCity at Vienna Airport cover a wide range of industries, including aviation, hospitality, retail, services, hotels, parking, logistics, international freight and tool manufacturers. Flughafen Wien AG's goal is therefore to develop the airport into a Smart AirportCity and further strengthen its pioneering role in energy efficiency, sustainability and innovation.

To this end, Flughafen Wien AG has already made several innovative decisions to become the most energy-efficient airport city in the world: in 2014, it introduced Eco Management and Audit Schemes, conducted a building sustainability analysis and developed a master plan for improvements in a think tank.

By taking an integrated approach between energy supply structures and buildings, identifying measures to reduce energy costs for both users and building operations, and involving Flughafen Wien AG companies and departments in the Smart AirportCity process to ensure smooth flight operations, infrastructure costs have been minimised. This will contribute significantly to the future development of Vienna Airport as a smart and sustainable airport city: the goal of Smart AirportCity is to increase passenger and business satisfaction at this location and to sustainably demonstrate that greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs are sustainable. The automatic identification and targeting of implementation to increase energy optimisation potential, as well as the systematic involvement of energy management, operations and users, were the key contributions of the innovation. The aim of the technical and social innovations was to significantly reduce the burden on the infrastructure. By exploring the development potential of Smart AirportCity, we were also able to identify future opportunities that could be transferred to other business areas. In the long term, Smart AirportCity has the potential to transform Vienna Airport City into an emission-free urban area as part of the transformation of the Austrian energy system. The success of the project is largely communicated by the more than 25 million passengers per year and the 20,000 employees of the companies as well as their networking with other international airports.

•  Improvement over conventional monitoring solutions
•  New quality of energy management through smart energy monitoring and intelligent plant optimisation

•  Reflection of essential technical requirements
•  Development of system architecture with uniform data layer and central interface
•  No data in the tool itself
•  High reliability and speed
•  New data points are automatically queried and displayed
•  Visualisation and creation of (virtual) data points through diverse, sophisticated functionalities

The initial conclusions identified that these measures have significant potential for improvement from a stakeholder perspective (passengers, airport operations, businesses, users). On this basis, demonstration facilities were identified in a stakeholder-driven process as part of the Smart Airport City project. Subsequently, the necessary technical adjustments in the area of facility control were planned and implemented. An innovative monitoring and optimisation system was introduced to continuously check reliability. This was achieved by creating a complete virtual airport city as part of the initial design, in which the expected monitoring results could be evaluated through simulations. Significant deviations between the target and actual areas help to commission the system. In operation, this helps to detect more complex sensor errors, control valve malfunctions or programming errors in the building control system. In the implementation of measures to reduce the infrastructure load (=reduction of network costs) and to lower energy costs, an innovative feedback system was developed and installed, based on passenger flow forecasts and weather trends.

The system makes it possible to propose measures and assess their impact. The analysis of stakeholders and the environment, as well as the introduction of a communication process to involve users, have enabled us to identify relevant users and exploit the potential of technical solutions.