Systems engineering for safe and efficient airport operations

Airports are complex ecosystems of people, procedures and technology. As a supplier of air traffic management systems, Saab ATM operates at the heart of this environment, delivering highly integrated systems that process vast amounts of critical data and respond to asynchronous events. Deploying these systems worldwide presents formidable engineering challenges. Despite extensive regulations and standards, local circumstances and user preferences generate a wide range of requirements. Saab ATM must accommodate this diversity while maintaining a sophisticated, proprietary software platform with safety- and business-critical functionality. Complex system behavior, human and hardware interactions and numerous external interfaces add further challenges. Systems engineers need powerful tools to manage this complexity. AI is already proving its value, but in an environment where humans remain firmly in the loop, understanding and predicting system behavior are paramount. In this keynote, Joyce van Niel connects air traffic management and the Dutch high-tech industry. By comparing technologies, methodologies, engineering skills and tools, she explores what these two worlds have in common, where they differ and what they can learn from each other.