Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1 December 2014
Welcome Remarks
Datuk Che Azemi Haron, Deputy Secretary General, Ministry of Communications and Multimedia, Malaysia
Mrs. Norizan Baharin, Chairman of the Focus Group on “Aviation Applications of Cloud Computing for Flight Data Monitoring”
Distinguished colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen,
As-salamu alaykum
Good morning and welcome to this first meeting of the ITU-T Focus Group on “Aviation Applications of Cloud Computing for Flight Data Monitoring”. It is a great pleasure to be back again in the beautiful and vibrant city of Kuala Lumpur.
I would like to begin by thanking the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, for hosting this meeting and their strong support for the establishment of the Focus Group.
It was in March this year that Malaysia’s Minister for Communications and Multimedia, Mr. Ahmad Shabery Cheek, called on ITU to contribute its expertise to the international effort to find solutions to track commercial aircraft in real time.
Answering to that call, ITU facilitated an “Expert Dialogue on Real-time Monitoring of Flight Data, including the Black Box – the Need for International Standards in the Age of Cloud Computing and Big Data” in May here in Kuala Lumpur. Despite the short notice, it was very successful in bringing together key stakeholders in the aviation community with the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. I believe many of you were there and I would like to thank you again for your contribution to that dialogue and for joining this Focus Group.
The Expert Dialogue exchanged views on the viability of storing flight data on standards-based ‘aviation clouds’ with a view to improving operational and environmental safety and efficiency of commercial aircraft. Some very promising aviation cloud applications were discussed besides flight safety such as engine-health monitoring for predictive maintenance planning, and the reporting of meteorological data to achieve fuel-savings through more efficient flight routing.
The recommendations of the Expert Dialogue motivated ITU’s membership to establish this Focus Group. Its aim is to bring stakeholders together to identify the requirements, technologies and international standards for the adoption of cloud computing applications for the real-time monitoring of flight data.
However, the challenge is not solely a technical one. The principal challenge is the policies and regulations to ensure the global interconnection and interoperability of the future solutions.
ITU is the lead UN agency for ICTs with a membership of 193 governments as well as importantly some 700 private sector entities including most of the world’s leading ICT and telecommunication companies, and more recently over 80 academic institutions. ITU offers the international community a consensus-based platform for satellite coordination, radiofrequency allocations, the development of technical standards that ensure the interconnection and interoperability of the telecommunications network, and increased access to the technology to all citizens.
Cloud computing has become an important focus of ITU’s standardization work and a range of standards has been developed to improve the interoperability of cloud computing solutions.
In recent years, ITU has formed new partnerships with industry sectors not traditionally part of the ICT standardization ecosystem, such as the energy, transportation and health sectors, and starting this week with the financial sector in a new Focus Group on financial digital inclusion. This is to ensure that ICT-enabled innovations in different industry sectors have the necessary supporting ICT international standards and policy frameworks needed to achieve their full potential.
It is this expertise that the Focus Group will use to help the international effort to find solutions to monitor commercial flight data in real time, and avoid the need in future to locate and recover Black Boxes.
The Focus Group will determine whether existing ITU-T standards are capable of supporting real-time monitoring of flight data; whether these standards should be modified for this purpose; or whether a new, aviation-targeted standardization effort is required in ITU.
The Expert Dialogue discussions last May on the issue of ‘global flight tracking’ contributed to the adoption of a new Resolution on the subject at the recent ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2014 (PP-14) in Busan, Republic of Korea.
The Resolution instructs the upcoming World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15) to address global flight tracking as part of its agenda and tasks the Director of ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau to submit a report on the matter to the conference.
Although there is a clear distinction between that issue and the work of this Focus Group, I believe the Expert Dialogue strengthened the relationship between the ICT sector and the aviation sector that will help both processes.
The participation of the aviation and avionics sectors is essential to the work of this group, which is why I am very pleased to welcome delegates from those sectors as well as ICAO and IATA to this meeting.
I am also very pleased to see a number of our academia colleagues joining the group.
ITU and ICAO have long enjoyed mutually beneficial cooperation with regard to aviation related issues, most notably related satellite and radio spectrum allocations, but with this new activity we look forward to extending this collaboration to ITU’s cloud computing standardization work,
The Focus Group will take care to avoid duplicating work that is not within the mandate of ITU’s Standardization Sector, but will determine precisely how ITU can contribute its expertise to global efforts to improve the safety and efficiency of air travel.
Participation in this group is free of charge and open to all on an equal footing, and so I encourage you to invite other experts and organizations to join that might add value to the work.
The frequency and location of meetings will be determined by the Focus Group and, as is the case for most ITU activities, this group will use remote collaboration tools to the maximum extent possible.
Anyone interested in hosting future meetings of the Focus Group are invited to speak to the secretariat or the Chairman.
The success of the group will very much depend on its leadership, so I am very pleased that Mrs. Norizan Baharin of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has agreed to Chair the group, and Mr Zhu Yanbo of China’s Aviation Data Communication Corporation, for agreeing to act as vice-chairman.
Thank you all for attending this meeting and I wish you all a most enjoyable and productive meeting.
